Beginnings
by Redbyrd
Summary: Sequel to Origins. In the very early days of the Teen Titans, Robin attempts to train his new team while his teammates must learn to endure both their new leader and each other. Chapter 4 is new!
1. Lessons in dramatic irony

**Legal Disclaimer:** If they were mine I would have so much money that my hobbies would include skiing the Alps and catamaran sailing, not writing fanfiction.  
**Universe:** Fleshing out the cartoon canon some comic canon and some Batman and Justice League canon, too.  
**Timeline:** Sequel to _Origins_,before the 1st episode (_Divide and Conquer_)  
**Summary:** As Robin trains his new team they attempt to deal with both each other and their enigmatic new leader, and Robin has his own issues to work through while meeting a spunky alien girl.  
**Series:** Part 2 of a planned series.  
**Pairings:** none… yet  
**Content Disclaimer:** Nothing is sacred in the DC Comics universe, because there IS NO DC Comics universe. Anything is fair game. This fic is a blender of everything that has come before, cartoon and comic, for everything DC, in order to give plausibility, coherency, continuity, and integrity to the Teen Titans cartoon show.

* * *

_Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end._  
Semisonic, _Closing Time_

**Columbus**** weekend  
****Saturday night, ****11 pm**

Robin pointed down towards the street, down towards the six gang members making ready to rob a jewelry store.

"Titans, go."

The three titans took off, Raven levitating, Garfield in eagle form, and Victor jumping off the moderate two-story building, landing with ease. Robin stood on the roof and watched them go, muscles tense, a birdarang at the ready. When they reached the street they regrouped, Victor flanked by Raven and Garfield. They marched purposefully towards their destination as Robin watched, eye mask thin, anticipating, as the trio approached the jewelry store. Three of the gang members were staring into the display window, drooling, obviously high. They hadn't noticed the would-be heroes approach.

Yet.

"How many were there?" Garfield whispered.

"I counted five," Victor replied in low tones.

"I only see three."

"There were six," Raven deadpanned.

Victor cut her a sideways glance. "And how are you so sure?"

"I sensed them," Raven answered, slightly irritated. Now they were barely a half a block away. "Let's just… get this done."

"Ok dudes, what's the plan?"

"Plan?" Victor asked, surprised. "Robin didn't give us one."

"Six assailants armed with small firearms attempting to rob a stationary location," Raven parroted back to them.

Victor winced. "Oh. I guess he did."

Garfield nodded once, decisive. "Right." But then he hesitated. "So, what do we do again?"

"Nnnnngh," Raven brought a hand to her temple in irritation.

Then suddenly one of the missing gangbangers emerged from an alleyway. "Hey!" he shouted, instantly getting his buddies' attention. The three at the window whirled around and two more came out of the alley.

"Shit!" Victor exclaimed.

"I don't do that on command," Raven deadpanned.

"What now?" Gar hissed, wrong-footed for having so suddenly lost the element of surprise.

"Get lost, freaks!" A gangbanger called out.

Victor shook his head. "Can't do that."

"Yeah!" Garfield chorused, willing to follow Victor's lead.

"You're in our territory, freaks," another gangbanger spat at them. Then he aimed his pistol square at Victor's chest. His friends followed suit. "Now get lost, or get ventilated." The clicks of cocking guns and the off-switching of safeties echoed down the street.

Meanwhile, back on the rooftop: "If they don't screw up they don't learn. If they don't screw up they don't learn. If they don't screw up they don't learn…" Robin chanted to himself while shuffling three birdarangs in each hand. His grapnel hung loose and ready, just in case.

And back on the street, Victor glanced sidelong at Garfield. "I think these dawgs need a fastball special."

Garfield laughed aloud, his eyes lighting up. "DUDE!"

Then before the gangbangers could react — or Robin could groan — Garfield leapt into the air, curled into a ball, turned into a wolverine, and was bodily chucked into the three gangbangers staring wide-eyed in front of the display. Right before the moment of impact the wolverine turned into a triceratops and careened through the window, taking the gaping gangbangers with him... along with most of the building front.

"Booyah!"

Raven glanced sideways at him. "Are we supposed to destroy the building?"

Victor's face fell. "Uh… Oops?"

Just then Garfield stood back up. His human form appeared above the rubble of the display, priceless necklaces hanging off of him, four bracelets on each arm, and a tiara perched skewed atop his head.

"Look dudes, I'm Wonder Woman!"

Victor quirked an eyebrow and Raven groaned.

Back on the rooftop Robin massaged a temple. "Where's Donna when I need her?" he all but whined. At least the transmitter Victor was wearing was functioning properly, he reminded himself. That was something at least.

"SHOOT THE FREAKS!"

In all the commotion our three heroes had apparently forgotten about the other three gangbangers.

"Whu-oh!"

"Yikes!"

"Nnnnnngh."

Gunfire erupted in the street and the three heroes scattered, diving for cover.

"Raven!" Victor yelled from behind some trash cans. "It's all you girl!"

"Azarath Methrion—"

_CLANG!_

"Huh?"

_KLING_ —** CLANG!**

The three guns were swiftly birdaranged out of the gangbangers' hands.

"Aww no fair, man!" Victor yelled up to Robin's rooftop.

"Yeah dude!" Garfield echoed. "We so _totally_ had it covered!"

Back on the rooftop Robin grit his teeth, barely resisting the urge to smack both hands to his forehead. He settled for an exasperated sigh. "If they don't screw up… it'll be a miracle."

Suddenly the unmistakable sounds of flesh pounding flesh grabbed their attention. The three of them looked over in time to see a lone dark-clad figure—

"Hey!" Victor pointed. "Who's kicking the shit out of our badguys?"

Robin was instantly serious. "Who indeed…" And he swung in on his decel cable.

Raven and Garfield stood beside Victor as they watched the mysterious figure drop the first gangbanger with the element of surprise.

"Uh, dudes? Did Robin, like, bring in a wringer or something?"

The second fell after a few well-placed punches.

"I dunno, man." Victor gave the fight an appraising look. "But he's got some good moves."

"Uh, shouldn't we be helping?" Raven pointed out.

Just then the last remaining gangbanger managed to pull a knife. However, he barely had time to affect a scowl before Robin swung in and landed his boot to the kid's head. The gangbanger crumpled and Robin landed atop him, holding him down with one foot until he was sure the kid was unconscious.

The glare he leveled at his three 'teammates' was unmistakable.

"Yo, look, Robin," Victor began, hands raised in an unconscious gesture of passivity. "We stopped the badguys and foiled the robbery. It's all good."

Robin's eyes were thin. "No. You willfully destroyed private property and left yourselves wide open for attack. _He—_" Robin jammed a thumb and the dark-clad figure skulking in the shadows, "stopped the badguys." That glare was now fully leveled against the mysterious stranger.

"Yeah, dude!" Garfield piped up. "You got some killer moves — who the heck are you?"

Robin turned on Garfield. "All that jewelry had better find its way back inside the store or else you're looking at grand theft and felony B & E."

Garfield simpered and swiftly began stripping the jewelry from his person.

Then Robin turned back to the stranger. "But that's a fair question." He folded his arms and gave the shadow a scrutinizing gaze.

"We are who you think we are," said Raven, addressing the stranger. Then she muttered: "Or at least, we're trying to be."

"I thought so," the figure spoke at last in a man's voice as he finally stepped forward into the light. "Word spreads in this part a town. A bunch a teenaged freaks start bustin' up gangland robberies, could only mean one thing. The Titans're back in town." The stranger, an African-American in his early twenties, wearing black cargo pants and a black long sleeve tee under a denim vest, looked at each of them in turn. "Though aside from Robin here none of you look much like Titans."

"Pffft, that was the _old_ team, dawg," Victor replied with a dismissing wave of a hand.

"Yeah, dude! You're looking at the _new_ Teen Titans."

The stranger arched an eyebrow. "New Teen Titans? For real?"

"As real as it gets," Victor said with a grin.

"You still haven't answered the question," Robin reminded everyone, and not without a fair bit of Bat-flavored menace.

The stranger blinked. "Huh? _Oh!_ Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry 'bout that. Name's Duncan. Mal Duncan."

Garfield stuck out a green hand, which Duncan accepted. "Garfield Logan, pleased to meet you."

Robin quietly groaned, closing his eyes in frustration. "Codenames," he muttered. "Why haven't they picked codenames…?" Then he proceeded to busy himself securing the unconscious criminals, seeing as he seemed to be the only one who remembered them.

Raven glanced sideways at him before returning her attentions to the stranger.

"Your sister was… attacked?"

Everybody did a double-take, Duncan more so than the others.

"How the _heck_ did you know that?"

Raven blinked.

"Uh… Yeah. Yeah about a month ago. She was coming home from a late-nighter at the hospital when a bunch of punk bastards tried to jump her. She got home all out a breath and babblin' on about how a group of ragtag sci-fi rejects saved her life. Take that and add the weird business at the Met last month and the crazy rumors spreadin' down at the club—"

"Club?" Garfield couldn't help but ask.

"I'm an assistant manager at a dance club in Farmingdale, _Gabriel's Horn_."

"Cool!" Victor exclaimed.

"Yes very fascinating," Robin interrupted just a shade above condescending as he emerged from the rubble of the storefront. "But you're a long way from Farmingdale, and I doubt they teach street-fighting in management school."

"Hey, in this neighborhood you'd be surprised at what you can learn in school." Duncan held their gazes meaningfully for a second before the moment was broken. "But naw, I didn't go to management school. I just got a head for the books, ya know? Anyway I started as a bouncer — that's how I got to know most of the regulars. Well some of them still chat me up when they see me makin' the rounds. There the ones who've been talkin,' tellin' me about how all the gangs are suddenly on the lookout for a chorus of freaks who been makin' trouble all over the map. Anyway, between that and what my sister's been sayin', I figured I owed it to my personal curiosity to see if there was anything to it."

"Personal curiosity," Robin repeated, slow and toneless. "Is that why you carry mace and knuckle-dusters in your pockets?"

Everyone looked stunned, but Duncan recovered quickly. "Hey man, now you're gettin' personal."

"Dude, how'd you figure that?" Garfield asked, incredulous.

"The red welts on his right hand," Robin pointed out. "And smell the air. I doubt _they_ were carrying it." He pointed to the three unconscious gangbangers bound together in a jump line.

"Hey you really _are_ some sorta genius detective or something," Duncan appraised approvingly.

Robin scowled. "Don't change the subject. Were you down here looking for us, or were you looking for a fight?"

"Hey pal, you don't go lookin' for fights in this neighborhood — they find _you_."

Victor grimaced, a show of solidarity. "Heh, I'll bet they do."

"I think what Robin was _trying_ to ask," said Raven, sensing the growing undercurrents of hostility and trying to smooth things over, "is if you're a career vigilante."

"Dude, is that why you were looking for us? You wanna join the titans?"

"Hey I ain't no vigilante," Duncan defended. "Just a concerned citizen out for a stroll who happened upon a spot of trouble and thought he could lend a hand, seeing as the kids in trouble just happened to fit the bill of the ones that helped my sister when _she_ was in trouble herself."

"You're strolling pretty from Farmingdale," Robin pointed out.

Duncan matched Robin's glare.

"He's telling the truth," Raven informed them.

Robin spared a glance her way. She blinked passively at him. Belatedly Robin sighed.

"What were you doing out this far from Farmingdale at this time of night, dressed for a fight?" he asked tiredly.

"Any of you ever _been_ to Farmingdale?" Duncan asked by way of reply. "Ain't no way I can afford to live there, not on what I make. I live near here, with my sister. I gotta take the train into the Island, which is dangerous enough in and of itself without the half-mile walk through these streets to and from the station."

"So the knuckles and the mace are for protection?"

"Hey look at my face, Boy Wonder. It's a good walk from the station on the Island to the club. You try being of minority color and take a midnight stroll through ritzy white communities, see how far you get before the cops pick you up. The mace and the knuckles mean I'll get me a lotta explainin' to do down at some precinct but a knife or a gun could get me shot by itchy-fingered white cops. So yeah, they're for protection all right. From _both_ sides."

Robin was silent, his lips pursed into a thin line. Raven stared on while Victor looked thoughtful and Garfield studied his shoes.

"Call the cops," Robin said at last. "Then get yourself out of here and home to your sister."

"Dude," Garfield suddenly spoke. "I went through a plate glass window. Why didn't the alarms go off?"

"They cut the building's power and phone lines," Robin informed him. "That's what these three were doing in the alley," he finished, pointing to the relevant criminals.

"And let me guess," Victor added. "No one in this neighborhood calls the cops for anything."

"Bingo," Duncan concurred.

"Call them," Robin directed again. "And then get home. Let the police pin it on the 'freaks.'"

"You sure, man?" Duncan asked, suddenly personable.

Robin nodded. "There's a pay phone down the block."

Duncan hesitated briefly but then shrugged. "Hell. The boys ain't never gonna believe this." And he took off at a jog towards the phone.

"And you three." Robin's voice was suddenly ice cold, reminding them all that they were still in trouble for the way the bust went down. "The lair. Nine tomorrow."

"Same Titan time, same Titan channel," Garfield droned, affecting all the melodrama of a child just sent to his room.

Robin was not amused. "Don't be late."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Raven deadpanned, smirking only slightly. Then she spread her arms and a raven cried and the three new titans disappeared in a vortex of bird-shaped obsidian.

When they were gone Robin sighed heavily and hung his head. "None of us were ever this green," he muttered, momentarily entertaining fond thoughts of his old teammates.

When the moment passed he collected his spent birdarangs and whipped out his grappling launch, which he fired at the nearest rooftop. Someone had to make sure that the wide-opened store was safe from would-be looters until the police arrived.

* * *

**The following evening**  
**7 pm**

"Dude, psych just hasn't been the same since you left," Gar said around a bite of pizza.

"Yeah," Raven agreed as she sipped her soda. "It's quieter."

Victor laughed and Gar smirked. Dick Grayson just shrugged. The four of them were sitting at Omega's eating pizza.

"And behavioral psych isn't the same without you being the class clown," he retorted, tit for tat.

"Have you caught up with the work yet?" Victor asked.

"With psych? No — Cabrini's got me writing five-page essays on every chapter I missed."

"Dude, seriously?"

Dick nodded. "I've only got two more to go," he said hopefully.

"On top of the homework you missed," Raven pointed out.

Victor winced. "Rough, man. What about that criminology class?"

"Historical overview of American criminal law," Dick supplied. "_That_ I'm caught up with," he confessed with a mixture of relief and pride.

"More essays?" Raven asked.

Dick shook his head. "Quizzes. Incredibly nit-picky quizzes."

"Ouch," Gar proclaimed.

"Hey I'll take a quiz over an essay any day of the week," said Victor.

"So what else, dude? How's the other classes treatin' ya? How's real life been — any good parties? Gone on any dates?"

Dick was laughing half-heartedly by the end of Gar's litany of questions.

"What?" Gar asked. "Dude, we've barely seen you these past few weeks and out of all us here you consistently stand the best chance of gettin' with the ladies, so spill!"

"Speak for yourself," Victor groused, and Dick continued to laugh.

"Sorry, Gar," Dick spoke through his laughter. "I'm lucky if I can catch a few innings of the playoffs while doing homework."

"Studying not conducive to the social life?" Victor asked rather rhetorically.

"Fancy that," Raven droned, though she was smirking slightly.

"Psssh, we all know _you_ could care less about mingling with humanity," Gar grumbled at Raven. "But some of us enjoy it, and one of that some isn't getting his due. And that's just sad, dudes."

"Gar's right," said Victor. Then to Dick, pointing: "_you_ need to get out more."

Dick laughed uneasily. "Hey, I'm just glad I had time for pizza tonight."

"Dude, this is the first time we've had pizza together in two weeks! And it would have been three if we hadn't a kidnapped you to celebrate your succeeding on those finals. The work is killing you dude — by starvation!"

"Look, when I'm all caught up with psych, then I'll have time to hang out again."

"I'll drink to that!" Victor raised his soda.

"Here, here!" Gar chorused, raising his own and 'clinking' it with Victors.

"Save me from their inane banter," Raven added to Dick as she too raised her cup.

Dick couldn't help but smile. "Aw, guys, I'm touched," he said sarcastically, raising his glass to theirs.

"If it were me, I'd be... rather disturbed, actually," Raven informed him.

Dick smirked. "Yeah, that too." Then he slurped down what was left of his soda and glanced at his watch. "Eh, I gotta jet."

"What?"

"Already?"

"Sorry guys. Gotta meet someone."

"A lady?"

"In yer dreams, Gar," Victor negated.

"Professor?" Raven offered.

"I'll see you later," Dick called out as he left the table.

"Don't make it too much later!" Gar called after him.

Dick winked, tossed out a wave, and disappeared around the corner.

"That dude's headed for one serious burnout," Gar appraised quite seriously.

"Well, at least he's busy with his own stuff," Victor pointed out. "It ain't gonna be pretty when he's free to hang out and we all scramble to make excuses."

"I just don't get why we can't tell him the truth," Gar lamented.

"Because Robin said so," Raven reminded him.

"Yeah, well, I still think it's pretty shitty," Gar continued. "He was the first normal person to ever be my friend and the main reason I managed a B in algebra, and _this_ is how I pay him back?"

"I know what you mean," Victor added. "He's the one who got me in on the beta test for that prototype mobile security system in my apartment _and_ he introduced me to the local Wayne Tech biomechanical engineers so that I don't have to go all the way back to Metropolis if something happens to my systems."

"We all like Dick," Raven deadpanned, pausing just long enough for the others to shoot her a double-take. "And we all owe him a great deal."

Gar blinked. "Uh huh."

"Damn straight."

"And that's why he cannot know," Raven proclaimed. "What if word got out that a normal, non-superpowered individual was friends with the Teen Titans?"

"You mean aside from him being the most envied person on the face of the Earth?" Gar rebutted, not really serious.

"He would become a target," Raven continued as if he hadn't spoken. "We're going to be making enemies soon, enemies who will stop at nothing to bring us down. The more we distance ourselves from Dick, the safer he'll be."

"Aren't you forgetting that he's _Dick Grayson_," Gar argued. "Do you have any idea what would happen to whoever or whatever messed with him? There's nothing that the Wayne fortune couldn't buy if old Bruce wanted it — _heck!_ Gotham street rumors are that he's Batman's benefactor!"

"And if you paid closer attention to the news out of Gotham," Victor interjected, "you'd see that the man's an affable if slightly air-headed billionaire playboy who throws wild money at charities and hires all the right managers to run his company sky high so that he's got the time to go trippin' all over the world and wrap his fancy sports cars around telephone poles. If the Bat really does use Wayne Tech gadgets, he's getting them from someone inside the company itself right out from under the boss man's nose."

"Moot point, dude," Gar retorted. "However you dice it, the Bat's gotta be indebted to Bruce Wayne. What do you think's gonna happen if his ward goes missing? Batman's gonna be all over it like flies to honey — and _hello!_ Who's Robin again? He already knows that Dick's our friend. That makes Batman, Batgirl, Robin, and the new Teen Titans out after the baddie!"

"You're also forgetting who _Bruce Wayne's_ friends are," Victor pointed out. "Remember he had that affair with Lois Lane that one time he was in Metropolis to negotiate with Luthor Corp? And who's _she_ buddied up with?"

"Superman!" Gar exclaimed.

"Damn straight. And not only that, but when Wayne Enterprises stopped playing with Luthor they went out the west coast and started lots of joint ventures with Queen Industries, and you _know _who's pockets Oliver Queen's been lining."

Garfield blinked and Victor groaned in frustration.

"Green Arrow!" he exclaimed. "Don't you read the paper?"

Gar blinked again.

"Oh, never mind!"

"No wait! Dude, I remember now!" Gar declared excitedly. "I saw on Tabloid TV that Oliver Queen endorsed the Green Arrow and Speedy cuz they made the city safe for cowardly billionaires like him."

"Well did you also see that Queen kicks in funds to the Justice League every once and a while, whenever he think that humanity needs to show more appreciation instead of letting Atlanteans and Amazons foot the bill all the time."

"Dude, that's right! So—"

"So the minute Bruce gets word that something happened to Dick all he has to do is make two phone calls from the office and Superman, the Justice League, and the Bat clan — and ergo, _us_ — are all over that badguy's ass!"

"Dick Grayson's gotta be, like, the safest dude on the planet!"

"Damn straight!"

"And are you willing to stake his life on that?" Raven spoke at last, the words quiet. Chilling.

Both Garfield and Victor looked over at her in surprise, as though they had forgotten she was there.

"Suppose it is as you've… deduced," Raven elaborated. "The combined forces of those looking for Dick could find him in a few hours of being alerted. But think of what could happen to Dick in that time. A few hours is more than enough time for a villain to make his life... most unpleasant, if not—"

"All right already!" Gar interrupted forcefully, his green skin suddenly washed out to a mottled aquamarine. "We get the picture. Enough already."

"I was merely making a point. One that had clearly eluded the two of you."

"Well we get it, alright?" Gar defended. "You don't have to go into grizzly detail about Dick winding up in pieces in the East River or nothing."

"Then you understand," Raven concluded. "Every time we associate ourselves with Dick Grayson from this moment forward… is a danger to him. He's my friend too, but if distancing myself is the only way to keep him safe then it doesn't seem like that hard a thing."

"Yeah, well, I didn't see you volunteering to stay in tonight," Gar groused as he stood from the table.

"Hey, where you going?" Victor asked him.

"Somewhere," Gar declared petulantly.

"But—"

"I'll see you later." And he stalked off, leaving Raven and Victor alone at their table for four.

Victor sighed tiredly and ran a hand over the human half of his head. "Great…" he lamented on the tails of that sigh. "Perfect. Wonderful."

"He'll be at the lair tonight," Raven reassured him.

"Yeah," Victor agreed. "This whole thing is too important to him for him not to be."

"He needs to prioritize better."

Victor sighed again. "He's oddly protective of Dick. Ever since he decided to become a hero."

Raven couldn't help the smirk. "Empowerment will do that to a person."

"Well, we've a few hours before we have to meet up again. That should give me enough time to stop by my apartment first." Victor stood from the table. "See you in a few."

Raven blinked, passively watching Victor's retreat. Finally she stood and telekinetically gathered all of their trash atop one of their trays, which she then carried to the trash.

It was dark when she left the pizza shop, the air crisp and cool and smelling of fall. She always loved this time of year — even in the muted seasons of Azarath. The changing leaves that die in a kaleidoscope of colors, leaving the trees barren as the chill of winter eventually sets in like the blanket of snow it rides in on. Fall was the gentle time, she knew, like tucking yawning children into bed by dying firelight in the exact temperature that induces contented sleep, feelings of safety and protection, of being wrapped up in loving — if imaginary — maternal arms.

Raven shivered slightly, hugging herself, watching her breath fog before her face. Yes, she thought, fall was gentle, preparing the world for winter's soft repose. The complete opposite of springtime, so like waking unnaturally to the suddenly harsh light of day, all pleasant dreams suddenly ripped away by intruding consciousness. Springtime that melts winter's protective snows and lays bare what had safely lain in hiding, exposing the carcasses of downed trees and flecks of leaves that didn't decompose, like throwing back the doors on all the skeletons in the closet. It's the harshness of spring that jars the world to activity, allowing it to maintain the fevered pitch of summer that dogs the Earth relentlessly until the chill of fall slows everything down again nto the gentle time, and allows the leaves to turn.

"Winter kept us warm," she murmured softly, quoting. "Covering Earth in forgetful snow." Then she dropped her arms and inhaled deeply. The scent of decay wasn't yet in the air, but soft anticipation was. Then suddenly her muted expression tipped upwards in a smirk. "And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

The smirk danced, self-satisfied, as she contemplated the slight staleness in the air. For Raven, fall wasn't about change. That was what spring was for. No, fall was about endings, endings as real and tangible as the stopping point of a circle. And fall was about preparations, the way nature prepared for the snow without planning for all the flooding when it inevitably melts. The seasons are circular while time is not. Raven knew this perhaps the best of anyone. Time, being linear, has a beginning. And as such, it also has an end. Raven knew that better than anyone, too. But for now, she can ignore it, the way the cascade of changing seasons ignores the constant march of time.

"Is this what you meant, Azar, when you said that time was paradox?"

A cold, empty gust of wind was the only reply.

Raven sighed and began the walk back to campus. She needed a few moments meditation before she'd be fit to rendezvous with her teammates again.

* * *

**Poetry credits:** Raven quotes form _The Wasteland_, _I. The Burial of the Dead_ by T.S. Elliot.


	2. Lessons in teamwork

**Westchester**  
**Sunday**  
**8:45 pm**

The very first time the New Teen Titans held a meeting, it was on the roof of Victor's apartment. Robin had told them in no uncertain terms what the life of a hero was like, how they would have to keep their lives a secret from everyone — no exceptions; how the cause came first and everything else — even family — came second; and how from that moment on the only people they could afford to trust were each other. Every single thing he could have possibly thought of that might have deterred them from their chosen path he discussed in great if anonymous detail, telling them that if anyone had second thoughts that they should back out right then and there. When no one did Robin gave them an address, and told them to meet him there the next evening at eight for their first exercise in teamwork.

That address turned out to be the entrance to a twenty foot by forty foot underground storage bunker, previously used by Wayne Enterprises to house raw materials until control of the synthetic textile development project moved from the New York offices to larger, newer sites outside Central City. When the Westchester plant was mothballed five years ago this facility was abandoned. When the plant was sold to Drake Industries and converted over for pharmaceutical research this facility, no more than a brief blurb on page five of the title deed, was forgotten in the shuffling of paperwork. That first exercise in teamwork: turning the place into the perfect Titans' Lair. Robin left them with a case of cleaning supplies and an envelope containing two-hundred dollars in non-sequential bills, telling them that the place had better be ready for their first 'official' meeting the following Saturday.

It had taken a fair bit of arguing, but the three would-be Titans managed to divide the labor between them. Raven and Garfield scrubbed the place from head to toe while Victor fixed the outmoded ventilation system. Raven and Garfield patched all the cracks in the concrete and covered every surface with a coat of sealant while Victor tapped into the city's power grid and ran electrical lines through the patched up ventilation system, giving them six working outlets and a light switch that controlled the string of track lighting hanging from the ceiling. The remainder of the two-hundred dollars went towards a contemporary area rug and, wisely, a dehumidifier.

Fortunately, Robin was merely amused to discover that he had to conduct that first meeting with them all sitting on the ground.

When the three would-be heroes returned to the Lair for the next meeting, they discovered that Robin had installed a state-of-the-art security system. After Robin had walked them through the steps to arm and disarm it, they noticed that the Lair was now moderately furnished. A large whiteboard was anchored to one wall near a square table with four chairs and a bookshelf already half full with reference materials. The Boy Wonder had told them that if they wanted anything else they were responsible for getting it themselves.

Over the next few weeks they added a futon, a refrigerator, and a microwave. When Robin brought in a TV with built in DVD and VCR Garfield and Victor had cheered, until Robin pointed out that it was for instructional use only and proceeded to show them security camera footage from recent store robberies. Victor was currently trying to convince Robin that they needed a Cray Mainframe complete with a T1 line for the ultimate in information gathering and storage, but he was having as much success at that as Garfield was in convincing him to update to a projector screen TV with a GameStation console and four-player Street Quest for the ultimate in real-time urban combat modeling and simulation. However, Robin _did_ consent to the stereo system that Victor was currently installing, so it wasn't all bad.

"Ok ladies and gentlemen, the speakers are hung, the system is wired, and _The Wall_ is sitting in readiness. Time to see what this bad boy can do!"

Raven, who was curled up on the futon with Tennyson and made up the entirety of Victor's audience, lowered her leather-bound volume and arched both eyebrows at him. "You're testing the stereo to Pink Floyd?"

"Can you think of a better album?" Victor hotly defended his choice. "Besides, it was in my discman." Heclosed his eyes and listened to the music. "Mmm-mmm-mmm, isn't that beautiful!"

"So the stereo works," Raven droned. "Bravo. Now would you mind turning it off?"

"If I said 'yes' would it matter much?"

"Not unless your speakers can fly."

Victor sighed dramatically. "That's what I thought." And he hit the stop button with a rather dejected thumb.

"Hey, didn't I just hear _The Wall_?" Suddenly Garfield appeared in the room. His descent down the entrance staircase had been obscured by the music.

"Victor was testing the sound system," Raven informed him as she picked up her book again.

"And it works like a dream, too," Victor boasted.

"Sweet! Let's here it!"

Victor frowned. "Sorry Gar. Some other time."

"What? Why?"

Victor stole a glance at Raven. "Because my speakers can't fly," he groused.

Raven smirked behind the safety of her book.

Garfield sighed, accepting this rather easily. He sought out a seat at the table and emptied his backpack. "Man, I never thought becoming a hero would involve so much homework," he lamented in genuine consternation.

"I didn't hear you complain so loudly when Robin told me to teach you how to drive stick," Victor pointed out.

"Not that you've made any effort," Garfield retorted.

"Do you have any idea how much it costs to park a car in Brooklyn someplace where it won't get stolen?" Victor asked. "I left my ride back in Metropolis, and I don't exactly have time to go home for the weekend."

"I thought that Robin said you could hack Hudson's computers and give yourself permission to leave it parked at school?" Garfield asked.

"He did," Victor replied. "But that still means I have to book time to go home and get it. It's four hours by car from here, five by train, and over _six_ by bus, and I don't exactly have the cash to fly."

"You could ask Dick for a ride," Garfield offered. "I'm sure he'd do it."

"Yeah when?" Victor retorted. "He's busier than all of us right now."

Garfield shrugged. "Just a thought, dude."

Victor chuckled. "I know you can't wait to destroy my clutch, dawg, but you're just gonna have to wait 'til after Thanksgiving."

"Yeah, yeah," Garfield deflected. Then he glanced at Raven. "But at least _I _already know how to drive."

Raven's jaw clenched briefly. "I fail to see why it's necessary when I can levitate and transport numerous people through the astral plane."

"Because Robin said so," Gar parroted her early words back to her.

"Besides, say someone else is driving and suddenly they get their head blown off or something. You should at least know how to lean over from the passenger seat and safely stop the vehicle."

"Which can be learned from common sense and an owner's manual," Raven retorted.

"Not according to Robin," Garfield pointed out.

"Besides," Victor added. "You might even enjoy it."

Raven groaned, forcing herself to ignore them, returned to her reading. After several moments they got the hint. Then Victor grabbed the chair opposite Garfield.

"Morse code, huh," he noted, reading the cover of the topmost book in Garfield's stack.

"I think I finally got it down," Garfield informed him. "I'm gonna ask Robin to test me on it."

"This is where it pays having an enhanced eidetic memory," Victor boasted with a grin. "Rote memorization is quick and painless."

"So how come you aren't pulling perfect scores in school?"

"Because data and processes mean nothing if you can't extrapolate them."

"Huh?"

"Why mathematicians suck at English," Raven clarified without looking up from her novel.

"Basically," Victor agreed.

Garfield sighed. "That's so not fair, dude."

Victor shrugged.

"Well here, at least tell me if I've got the alphabet right." Garfield proceeded to systematically tap on the tabletop. "Well?"

"Well you got all the letters right," Victor informed him, and Garfield smiled. "Just not in the right order."

Gar's smile fell. "Which ones did I mess up?"

"Everything between H and Z," Raven informed him from behind her novel.

"Dude, no way!" Gar protested in disbelief. Then to Raven: "and since when did _you _have the code memorized, too?"

"Since Robin told us that we needed to learn it," Raven answered.

"Well, you've got mental powers and _you're_ part android!" Gar retorted, pointing at both Raven and Victor in turn. "How's a normal person supposed to learn this stuff?"

"Practice."

Everyone turned suddenly to see that Robin had entered the Lair. He was standing at the base of the staircase, eying them from across the room.

"Practice until you get it right," he elaborated once he had their full attention. "And then practice afterwards to make sure you don't lose it. This isn't like grade school, where you can forget everything just as soon as you've been tested on it."

Raven closed her book and left it on the futon. She claimed a seat at the table and was followed closely by Robin, who didn't speak again until he too was seated. Thus the official meeting of the New Teen Titans began.

"You had an interesting night last night," Robin began, his voice neutral. "You made some good choices, and you made some poor choices, but the bottom line is the six gang members have been arrested and the store's insurance is covering the damages. The three that went through the window received only minor injuries and were released from the hospital this afternoon into police custody. While not an ideal operation, last night could have gone a lot worse so hopefully you can learn from what happened, and make adjustments for next time."

Robin addressed them casually, as he always did during mission debriefings. He focused on the facts and refrained from including his personal opinions in his appraisals. What the team tried either worked or didn't work, and the events spoke largely for themselves. When something worked Robin said so, and got them to understand why. When something didn't work, Robin said that too, and got them to understand why. In this fashion he avoided both undue praise and undue criticism, and he welcomed questions from the floor, managing to answer them without appearing superior or condescending. In this way he trained his team not to fear these debriefings or to think that their leader was anything less than approachable — a stark contrast to the Batman, to be sure, but then no one ever said that 'learning by example' couldn't include a very long list of what not to do.

Robin freely admitted that he learned everything he knew from Batman, but then he also admitted that not all of it had been what his mentor had intended to teach him. He was the Titans' leader, and as such is was his job to _lead_ them, not to simply train them in crime-fighting and imbue in them the Pavlovian reflex to obey his commands. Thus he tried to play the role of mentor or coach rather than drill sergeant, which was the impression he distinctly remembered Batman giving off during the early years of his training, before he'd grown enough as a detective and as a person to start questioning his orders. Of course, Batman's methods were subconsciously designed to keep people at arm's length, and that was a recipe for disaster in a team setting, especially when dealing with rookies, and Robin had no intentions of settling for anything less than the absolute best from his fledgling team.

At the end of the day, he'd still learned more from Batman than either of them would ever admit.

After his introduction, Robin stood from the table and approached the white board. He quickly sketched the block and the storefront.

"I told you that members of the Scorpion gang were planning on robbing the jewelry store," he continued, knocking on the sketch of the store with the butt of the marker. "We deployed from here, the roof of the medical center—" another jab at the appropriate building— "two blocks away. At that time there were three gang members here—" Robin drew three X's— "in front of the store window." Then he looked straight at his team. "What happened?"

"We went down to the street," Victor answered, by now used to Robin's expecting them to state the obvious.

Robin nodded. He placed a V in the center of the street in front of the sketch of the medical center, and added an R and a G in the appropriate places. "This was your first choice," he said. "Good or bad?"

Silence for a moment. Then:

"Well, Vic's big and intimidating, not to mention strong," Garfield answered hesitantly. "So it's good to put him first."

"And I can scan the area with my enhanced vision and hearing while Raven and Gar watch my back," Victor added.

Robin nodded and circled the trio on the board. "Your choice of formation was logical," he concluded. "Then what?"

The three of them exchanged glances. They knew that Robin had listened in and recorded everything they said, and briefly they wondered if he meant their debate on the actual number of gangbangers or on the next action they took.

"We sorta disagreed on how many goons there were," Garfield eventually confessed.

Robin nodded. "You moved forward without fully assessing the situation," he informed them. "That's always dangerous and most often unnecessary."

"I knew there were six," Raven spoke at last. "While I was levitating down I briefly scanned for surface thoughts. Besides ourselves… there were six sources."

"So you could see three of the Scorpions ahead of you and knew of three others," Robin reiterated. "Did you know their locations?"

Raven shook her head. "Only that they were close by."

"These hidden three, could you have focused in on one of them and traced the surface thoughts back to the source?"

Raven grit her teeth. Robin knew that she could have done that and it unnerved her that he wanted to hear her answer anyway.

"If I had taken more time with it," she confessed, a bit more shortly than intended.

"You were in no way rushed," Robin observed. "Why didn't you take the time?"

It also infuriated her how he could ask such questions with no inflection whatsoever.

"You'd already said 'go,'" Victor answered for her. "If I'd a taken the time I might have found them with an infrared sweep or Gar could have done a recon scan from the air and spotted them that way."

"Very true," Robin conceded. "You all could have taken the steps to fully assess the threat in front of you, but you didn't. Why?"

"It's like the dude said," Gar answered. "You'd already said 'go.'"

"Is this a matter of semantics then?" Robin asked, quite seriously. "If I had said 'Titans proceed,' or 'Titans hop to it,' would you have then taken the time to scan the area?"

No one answered, and Robin let the silence hang for a moment.

"Remember what I told you before we started field work?" he asked at length, rhetorically. "Every scenario is made up of variables. Some can be controlled and some can't, but it's your job to make sure that all of them are known because knowledge is your best weapon in this business. What were the variables for this scenario?"

"Uh, six assailants armed with small firearms attempting to rob a stationary location?" Gar guessed, echoing Raven's words from last night — which earned him a glare from the gothic sorceress.

"And what does that mean, exactly?" Robin asked him.

Garfield swallowed thickly and didn't answer.

"From the moment I said the word 'go,' you already knew what facts about the mission scenario?" Robin tried again, asking all of them this time.

"Well we knew the layout of the area," Victor offered.

Robin nodded and circled the map that he just drew. "What else?"

"We knew that the Scorpions were gonna hit the jewelry store," said Gar, eager to make up for he earlier blunder.

Robin wrote the gang name on the board. "Which means?" he probed.

"They're mainly into drugs," Raven supplied. "But after that large bust in the city last week they lost much of their supply. Splinter factions have been resorting to robbery to make up the difference."

Once again Robin nodded. "Mm-hmm. What else did you learn about them?"

"They'd probably be on something," Victor answered. "So they're behavior's gonna be erratic and unpredictable."

"Good. What else?"

"They're armed!" Garfield exclaimed. "Uh… semi-automatics and, um, non-automatics?"

"Six-shooters," Robin corrected. "Small time guns."

"Yeah, that," Gar simpered, blushing slightly.

"So you knew that the Scorpions, a local game with a drug habit and an unimpressive arsenal, were planning a jewelry heist in this particular neighborhood," Robin reiterated. "What else?"

Three blank stares.

"A local gang of doped up teenagers was planning a jewelry heist with limited firepower," Robin began again. "You saw the jewelry store, you know its layout, and you saw three of the gang members. What else do you know about the robbery?"

"Wait a sec," said Victor, as though he'd just had an epiphany. "You guys remember how those three were just standing in front of the window when we arrived? It was gonna be a smash and grab job! They were just so high they couldn't help but ogle the merchandise!"

"DUDE!" Garfield exclaimed, instantly agreeing. "I'll bet they were just waiting for their buddies to disable the alarm!"

"Which they must have done right before they spotted us," Victor continued the train of thought.

"Very good," said Robin. "And what else did you see in the street last night as you approached the store?"

Silence again.

"Well let me ask you this then," Robin tried again. "_How well_ could you see?"

"Uh, you mean me right?" Garfield asked hesitantly. "Since I don't have a sixth sense or enhanced vision or anything?"

"This is for anyone," Robin clarified. "What was the visibility like?"

"It was bright," Raven answered. "There were streetlights, neon signs…"

"Yeah," Victor added. "I didn't need my night vision."

"There were lots a shadows though," Garfield reminded them. "Remember how Mal hid in them?"

"Well get to Mr. Duncan later," Robin swiftly stepped in. "Tell me about the shadows."

"They spilled out from the alleys," said Raven. "Between the buildings."

"Right." Then in a move that would have surprised them if they hadn't been working with the Boy Wonder for nearly a month already, Robin proceeded to fill in the exact locations of the relevant street lights, complete with circles drawn to indicate their areas of cover. What wasn't covered by a circle he shaded with quick yet effective scribbles. "I imagine it looked something like this," he declared when he was done.

"Dude, how do you _do_ that?" Garfield asked, incredulous and envious.

"I see seven large shaded areas," Robin continued as if Garfield hadn't spoken. "Five narrow passages between buildings and one official alley large enough for vehicular access that crosses the street and continues to the next block. Each of these areas is dark enough to hide in and, depending on the angle, could quite effectively provide cover in a gunfight. If I had sent you against the League of Assassins you could have just causally strolled passed over fifty opponents in your march on the jewelry store and not even known they were there."

"We should have checked the alleys," Victor grumbled dejectedly, sensing where this was going.

"You had the time and several methods available to you," Robin reminded them. "If a sniper had been hiding in any of those shadowed places you'd have been dead before you knew what hit you."

Robin didn't say this to scare them, he merely spoke the truth. Perhaps that's what frightened them the most.

"But… why would a sniper be covering a gangland robbery?" Garfield couldn't help but ask.

"Each of these," Robin began, tapping each shaded area in turn, "represents and unknown variable, and every unknown variable adds to the risk of the mission. Remember what I said earlier, about knowledge being your best weapon? If you had checked every alley, you would have known which ones were dead ends, which ones had fire escapes, which ones provided viable avenues of ground escape — and which one hid their getaway car."

Three jaws dropped at this revelation.

"It was parked here," Robin informed them, drawing a rectangle in the appropriate spot. "A late-model Ford Explorer with New York plates, probably stolen."

"Dude…"

"Wait, how did we not think to ask ourselves how the badguys were planning on making off with the loot?" Victor asked, surprise and recrimination showing in his voice.

"If you had checked the alleys you would have found the car," Robin continued, once again ignoring his teammates' interjections. "If you found the car you could have disabled it with ease before engaging any opponents. Then if one of the gang members happened to get by you, you would that know if he ran for this alley then he would be likely running for the car, and that you wouldn't have to worry about him reaching it and either escaping or running you down with it. If he _didn't_ run for that alley, if he'd chosen another, you still would have known whether could have escaped on foot, if he'd be forced to take to the rooftops, or if it was some sort of dead end. If you knew the way was blocked by a six foot chain-link fence then you'd know he'd most likely try to climb it. If you knew that it was blocked by an eight foot high brick wall you'd know that he'd be trapped — which incidentally would mean that he'd be forced to double back on you, and that he'd have a perfect line of fire the minute you appeared at the mouth of the alley."

As Robin spoke, he marked the three viable escape routes on the map with arrows, the two chain-link fence blockades with a string of connected X's, and the two brick walls with solid rectangles. Then he added the two fire escape ladders where appropriate.

"I said knowledge was your best weapon," he reiterated once the drawing was complete. "But don't be quick to equate weapons with offense. Your knowledge of an area is the best _defense_ you have there. If you had checked the alleys beforehand, you would have known where the lines of sight were, where an opponent could get the drop on you, where reinforcements could arrive from, what a pursuit could lead to — all small tidbits of information that could keep you alive if the operation had gone south."

"Dudes… we're either seriously lucky, or seriously stupid."

"Heh, both," Victor agreed morosely.

True to form, Robin ignored them. "You see this map? You had the time and the ability to be made aware of all this information before you even thought about marching on the jewelry store. As you said, Raven could have scanned and Garfield could have flown recon. However, even if you didn't have superpowers available to you, you _still_ could have gathered this information." Robin then tapped on the board at the triangle of V-R-G titans' formation. Then he erased it. "Victor has night vision," he reminded them. "Instead of putting him in front — where his attention is directed forward, someone else could have taken point. Victor could have followed second, freeing his enhanced eye to scan the alleys as you passed them, with the third member as rearguard." Robin drew a new triangle in place of the old one, this time with Raven ahead, Victor following directly behind, and Garfield staggered slightly behind him. "Your old formation was perfectly acceptable provided that you had already filled in this map. However, something like this—" he tapped on the new triangle— "is the best choice for eliminating the variables as you go along."

"And our only plus so far becomes a minus," Raven announced, more informative than upset.

"But even this approach here—" Dick continued, tapping his new diagram, "isn't the best one in this situation." And so he erased it. "Look at the placement of these alleys. What do you see?"

Silence while the three rookies studied the map again.

"Uh… they're staggered?" Garfield guessed.

Robin smiled at him. Barely a twitch of his lips, but it warmed Gar straight down to his toes.

"Exactly. None of these buildings are the same size so the alleys aren't uniformly spaced. Aside from the drivable one, none of them are directly across from each other — not even close."

"We coulda zigzagged!" Victor exclaimed suddenly. Then, to his teammates: "you know, like they do in the movies! We split up, two of us on one side and one on the other. We check the alley and make sure it's clear, using them hand signals we're supposed to be learning. If it's clear all's good, but if not the other side can quickly cover it. And we trade off like that, advancing down the street."

"Victor's right," Robin informed them. "Of course ordinary vision would have been limited by the darkness, so Victor with his night vision would have taken one side of the street. Garfield could turn into any creature with night vision if his own eyes weren't sensitive enough, with Raven covering him as he did so. This is a much more defensive method than the previous approach."

"And defensive is better," Raven stated tonelessly.

Robin nodded. "When you're dealing with unknown variables? Absolutely. But moving on…" He drew the original triangle formation on the white board again, this time in the location where they finally stopped. Then off to the side he drew three more X's to signify the three additional threats. "Did you see where these three came from?" he asked, tapping one of the X's.

The three rookies looked to each other.

"Guess not," Victor confessed for them.

Robin held up a finger for pause, then erased two of the X's. "This one appeared first. He's the one who shouted. That caused the three at the window to turn around and the final two to emerge from the alley."

"We know they were dealing with the alarm," said Garfield. "So they had to come from that alley there, beside the jewelry store."

"Very true," Robin conceded. "But you didn't learn that until afterwards. Hindsight's only twenty/twenty if you live long enough to use it. With Victor focusing on the street ahead, Garfield should have been looking to left and behind, and Raven to the right and behind. You had the entire street covered. Why didn't you spot him?"

The three exchanged glances again.

"We weren't as… diligent… as we could have been," Raven explained at length, "in ensuring that no one got in behind us." Then, since she knew Robin knew anyway: "we were… preoccupied… with each other."

Robin nodded gravely. "You didn't go into this operation on even footing," he reminded them. "Raven knew more than the rest of you about the potential threat, and you didn't formulate a specific plan before engaging. Why have I been pressing that knowledge is the most important thing? It's so you can formulate a plan of attack. The more variables you have under your control, the tighter your plan is. The first step — and ergo your first mistake — is to have some sort of plan in mind that everyone's aware of and has agreed to. It's in the planning stages that Raven would have made her information known — that there were three more marks visually unaccounted for. Logically then, since you had the time, you would have either had Raven locate them telepathically or sent Garfield on a flyby to ascertain the whereabouts of those three _variables_. If of course you'd deduced that, based on the actions of the three in front of the store, that you _didn't_ have time to spare, you could have gone for the zigzagging pattern Victor suggested — with Raven's three absent marks in mind — but either way, your method of engagement would have been planned and understood."

"But instead we marched right in there like something out of a spaghetti western," Victor lamented. Garfield hung his head and Raven blinked, not getting the reference.

Robin allowed himself a smirk before continuing. "Instead you rushed to action and only then brought up the prospect of a plan after you'd committed yourselves." Then the smirk fell and he looked directly at Raven. "Suppose you'd moved in silently instead of debating a plan. You wouldn't have known how many opponents your teammates thought they were facing. If Victor thought there were five, and had five opponents in front of him, that allows the sixth to maneuver into position and shoot him in the back. Never ever assume that your teammates are working from the same knowledge base that you are."

For the first time that night, Raven deliberately looked away.

"Now as I recall," Robin went on, once again addressing all three of them. "You said that you didn't take the time to scan the area — or to form a plan, because I'd already told you to 'go.' I suppose that was _my _mistake, and I apologize if I wasn't clear enough, but 'go' did not have to mean 'go after the badguys.' It simply meant that it was time for you to begin the operation. You could have — and _should _have — started by making a plan."

"Who knew that crime-fighting was for English majors," Garfield groused, and Victor had the good sense to stifle his laugh.

"But like I said before," Robin continued. "If you had ascertained that you did not have time for deliberation you could have leapt immediately to action — but even then, you should have already known your plan."

"Well how can we plan something if we don't, you know, _plan_ it?" Victor asked.

"A fixed number of assailants armed with small firearms attempting to rob a stationary location," Robin rattled off. "Sound familiar? Raven said it last night and Garfield tried it earlier. Do you remember where you heard it first? It was in that list of scenarios I gave you last week for possible criminal encounters."

By the looks on their faces they obviously remembered.

Just now.

"What does that scenario tell you?" Robin asked. "I didn't word it like that to confuse you with police jargon. I'll give you a hint: think about variables."

"You said a stationary location," Victor reasoned. "We knew that location — the jewelry store — and that it was, uh, stationary, so — ah — not like an armored car, or something."

"The map," Garfield practically whined. "You say 'stationary location' but you mean that we should have known everything on that map — except where the badguys were."

"Them too," Raven countered. "A fixed number of assailants — I knew there to be six. We saw three, and should have found three more."

"Armed with small firearms," Victor continued. "That tells us the threat level."

"And it's a robbery," Raven added. "We should have anticipated the getaway car."

"A fixed number of assailants armed with small firearms attempting to rob a stationary location," Robin repeated. "Not all situations are alike — never assume that they will be. But there _are _common scenarios, and those common scenarios automatically provide you with plans. That one sentence you memorized but didn't contemplate gave you everything you needed to know about the situation you were facing last night. Even if you presumed that you didn't have time to discuss tactics, if you had all recognized that scenario — and took everything I've been saying about knowledge and variables to heart — then you would have been aware of the plan the minute I said the word 'go.'"

"And if we had time for recon we would have do that first, and if we didn't we would have done the zigzagging thingy," Victor concluded. "All without needing to talk about it. God! _Why_ is this so obvious now when we were _clueless_ last night?"

"Hindsight," Raven deadpanned.

"Yeah," Garfield admitted. "Good thing we lived to get it."

"Now you found yourselves facing six opponents," Robin returned to topic. "Three in front of you and three off to your left. What did you do?"

"Uh… engaged in witty banter?" Garfield offered hopefully.

Robin allowed himself another smirk. Accurate, but not the answer he was going for. "Indeed," he conceded. "And mostly with each other."

Both Garfield and Victor had the grace to look embarrassed.

"Then what?" Robin prompted.

Victor buried his head in his hands, groaning. "I threw Gar through a plate-glass window," he whined, having already surmised that this wasn't the brightest choice.

"That you did," Robin managed to concur with a straight face. "Would you mind telling me what prompted you to encourage Marvel Comics to sue the Titans for copyright infringement?"

Garfield nearly choked on his surprise. "Whoa!" he spat out. "Robin reads comics! _Robin,_ reads _comics_!"

Both Victor and Raven were equally wide-eyed.

"Hey just because I used to work in a cave, doesn't mean I lived in one," Robin said in his own defense.

"But still, dude, it's _weird_ thinking of you doing normal things like reading comics," said Garfield. "Next you're going to tell us that you played tee-ball and took swimming lessons at the Y."

Dick Grayson stifled a sigh as he regarded his friends through the Robin mask. It was his father who taught him how to swim, but he'd perfected his technique in the pool at Wayne Manor. And he's never had time for organized sports, games of pick-up basketball down in Florida while the circus wintered there were as close as he's gotten in that regard. For all his abilities and achievements, Dick Grayson has never won a single trophy, been awarded a single ribbon, or earned a single certificate outside of his high school diploma.

Standing here like this, facing his three friends around the table… Robin's new teammates… Dick was painfully aware of why Bruce Wayne never kept in close company without anyone who didn't know about the night life. Sure he had his 'society friends,' the ones he'd pal around with at all those black-tie affairs, but none of them stopped by the manor for coffee on Sunday afternoons, or invited him to their daughters' dance recitals, but if their rounds of conversation felt half as hollow to Bruce as the one at the pizza shop felt to Dick… he suddenly gained a newfound appreciation for his guardian's enforced loneliness.

The added pang was for how when this meeting was over, Dick couldn't bring himself to pick up the phone and tell Bruce that.

"Why is that so hard to believe?" Robin asked, regaining control.

"Well you're — you're, well," Garfield stuttered. "You're _you!_ Robin, the Boy Wonder, sidekick to Batman and leader of _two_ incarnations of Titans!"

"Oh so you're saying that I'm supposed to have learned to swim in Atlantis and played baseball at the Justice League annual picnic?"

"Whoa, the Justice League has _picnics_?" Gar nearly fell out of his chair.

"You're being baited," Raven told him.

"Huh?"

"Yeah dawg," Victor concurred. "Robin's got you good."

Garfield saw a smirk finally creep into Robin's deadpan expression.

"Aww, no fair, dude!"

"You did it to yourself," Robin pointed out. "Appearances can be deceiving. Never assume that you know someone, or that you have all the facts, especially in this business. It can be fatal."

A heavy silence hung in the air.

"So… the Justice League _doesn't_ have picnics?" Gar finally asked, sheepishly.

Raven groaned and Victor rolled his eyes.

"Well they tried for a holiday potluck," Robin began. "But then Aquaman got drunk on some of the Martian Manhunter's homebrew and proposed to Wonder Woman. There was almost an international incident."

Garfield was pale, wide-eyed, and slack-jawed. "DUDE!"

Then Victor broke out laughing and even Raven had to cover her mouth to stifle her amusement. Robin was smirking only slightly. After all, that story was true. He just didn't need to tell _them_ that.

"That was really mean," Gar groused, having gotten the hint.

"You're an easy mark," Robin appraised. "We'll have to work on that. Now, I do believe Victor was going to explain why he felt the need to throw you through a plate glass window."

Victor shifted uncomfortably in his seat, back in the spotlight. "Well, it worked for Colossus and Wolverine," he offered at length.

Robin turned to Gar. "And just because your name is Logan you thought that something that works in comics has a bearing on the real world?"

Gar had to laugh. "Dude, he's Colossus, she's Phoenix, and I'm, like, the bastard lovechild of Wolfsbane and Morph! How is this _not_ like something from comics?"

Robin's eye mask thinned. "If you call me Cyclops I will dismember you."

Garfield gulped. "Noted."

"But back to your fastball special," Robin said to Victor, and Victor groaned. "Using your enhanced strength to throw Garfield into your opponents isn't necessarily a bad tactic."

Victor sat up straighter at this. "No kidding?"

"There are certain situations where it's a perfectly viable option," Robin explained. "However, it should be a practiced move and not something thrown together last minute. You should know how hard to throw him, where to aim, and what the end result will be. If the move had been rehearsed there's no reason why you couldn't have used it."

"So, it wasn't all bad?" Victor asked, almost afraid to hope for reprieve.

Robin answered by addressing Garfield. "You turned into a wolverine just because you could, I get that. But why did you choose the triceratops?"

Garfield shrugged. He could tell that Robin was upset about that, even if he didn't come right out and say it. He felt like a kid in the principal's office.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he mused dejectedly.

"Why?"

Gar shrugged again, slouching lower in his chair. "Cuz it's big, I guess," he said. "I coulda taken 'em all down at once. Easy. And… well, their guns were puny. Would a bounced off my scales."

Robin's lips pursed into a thin line as he seemed to process this information. "Animal transformation is _your_ ability," he said finally. "No one knows its ins and outs better than you do and I won't be so presumptuous as to tell you how you can best use your powers, but you changed first into a wolverine — now I'm just going to assume that was to make you a better projectile." The way Robin said that made it sound like he believed anything but. If possible, Garfield slumped even lower in his chair.

"You also gave valid reasons for choosing the triceratops," Robin continued. "But consider this: your size, weight, and inertia as you crashed through the window were enough to rip out most of the concrete facing on the building. Now I know you transformed back before landing inside the store because we had three unconscious teenagers in there as opposed to three gooey smears that _used to be_ teenagers. If that had been the case I would have personally slapped the cuffs on you for manslaughter. Now like I said, shape-shifting is your business, but if you mean to use that ability on this team then know that I will _not_ tolerate recklessness use of that ability to the determent of this team, the mission, or anyone's lives — civilian or otherwise. Do I make myself clear?"

Robin's voice never rose nor wavered to anything outside of conversational, but by the end of that speech Garfield felt himself subjected to a full-scale bat-glare. It grew worse when Gar realized that Robin was expecting an answer.

The animorph swallowed thickly. "Uh, y—yes, sir," he squeaked out.

Robin's gaze then swept across to Victor, and to Raven in turn. "This conversation applies to everyone in this room, including myself," he said authoritatively. "And it's one I hope to never have with any of you again. There can be no excuses for a show of force in great excess of what a situation requires. If too many suspects wind up in the hospital, if too many insurance claims are filed, then the authorities are going to get suspicious. Right now we exist in a state of grace with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This permission to operate is flimsy at best, and you can rest assured that it will be taken away the minute we give law enforcement excessive paperwork to deal with and let me tell you, it's twice as hard apprehending a criminal if you have to duck the cops at every turn."

When Robin's speech ended Garfield was still doing his best to convince his chair to swallow him whole, Victor had slouched over and was studying his strong, cybernetic hands, and Raven was staring off into space, seeming oddly thoughtful.

"Can I get some acknowledgment here, people?" Robin asked. "This is important stuff — I need to know that you all understand."

"Heh, loud and clear," Victor responded.

"Totally," Garfield mumbled.

"Understood," Raven added, brave enough to look Robin straight in the eye mask. The two of them held the gaze for a moment before Robin looked away. His gaze swept the table again.

"Now, you had three gang members in front of you and three off to your left," he continued, returning to topic once again. "Victor used Garfield to take out the three in front of you, thus removing the four of them from the picture." Robin altered his drawing accordingly. "Then the three off to the left opened fire."

"And now you're going to tell us how we could have prevented that, right?" Victor asked, more defeated than snide or sarcastic.

"No, I'm going to ask you how you could have prevented that."

Three expressions fell just slightly. That was worse.

"Keep the rest of the scenario the same," Robin prompted, clarifying. "Victor and Garfield teamed up for a fastball special and suddenly the goons at twelve o'clock are out of the picture. Within the bounds of this scenario, what could have been done to prevent the remaining gang members from shooting at you?"

The three would-be heroes exchanged glances, trying to gauge if any of them had the faintest clue and somehow Robin managed to keep his frustration hidden. He never realized how fortunate he was working with fellow sidekicks before. Sure Roy could be brash, Wally impatient, Donna overly enthusiastic, and Garth overly cautious, but they all knew their stuff. He felt like a marathon coach working with a team that was learning to crawl.

"Victor and Garfield were occupied with the three gang members in front of you," Robin tried again. "But tell me, Raven, is vigilantism a spectator sport?"

Okay so maybe his frustration showed just a little in his choice of words but he still managed to keep it from his voice. Of course, he was currently talking to the team's empath.

Raven grit her teeth to keep a lid on her emotions. "I should have dealt with the three on the left while my teammates took care of the ones in front of us," she supplied, her voice mechanical. She was angry at herself, and therefore knew that it would be foolish to direct it elsewhere, no matter _how_ appealing a target Robin was currently making himself.

Robin simply nodded. "I'll tell you what I just told Garfield — I won't presume to tell you how to use your powers. I just expect that you _will_ use them, when appropriate, to help this team. If you want to stand around and watch I suggest you find another vocation. The Titans don't have room for cheerleaders."

Victor's jaw dropped and Garfield gasped as a supernatural wind suddenly blew through the lair, kicking at Raven's hair and even ruffling Robin's cape. Robin, however, stood impassive as Raven sat staring at him from across the table with frosty amethyst eyes.

"As Titans' leader it's your job to point out our flaws so that we can improve them," she informed him icily. "I can accept that, but mind your tongue. Insulting us won't win you any favors."

Robin matched her glare, silently telegraphing that it would take more than small breezes and strong tones to intimidate him. "If you choose to take that as an insult," he said, "well, that's your prerogative. I was just stating a fact. You can't be a hero without acting the part. Now, the three gang members on your left opened fire, and you scattered for cover."

Robin redirected his attentions to the whiteboard and Raven knew that their conversation was over. She didn't know which irritated her more, the fact that he was right and she should have acted, his less than polite manner in pointing it out to her, or the way he just so casually addressed and then dismissed her concerns. She knew that he was in no way intimidated by her slight show of power; his body language alone told her that. His emotions were tightly leashed — he was by no means projecting them, but she could learn them well enough if she so chose. At times like these she wished she could glean something of his thoughts, but as usual his mind was dark to her. It was an edge she was used to having in personal interactions, and it confounded her to no end that this mere mortal was able to control his mind so well that he could keep her out.

"That's when Raven was _going_ to act," Garfield spoke, distracting her from her thoughts. "But then you knocked the guns outta their hands."

"Yeah, why'd you do that, anyway?" Victor asked. "We may have been handling it sloppily, but we were still handling it."

"You may be Titans," said Robin. "But you're still in training. As your leader yes I'm supposed to show you the ropes, but I'm also responsible for your safety. Every nature of this business is dangerous, just in varying degrees. If it gets too hot I pull the plug. You can't learn from your mistakes if they get you killed."

Everyone was silent for a moment after that, the weight of it sinking in. If any of them held any illusions of the nature of hero work before they became Titans it was guaranteed that none of them felt that way now. The work was at best unglamorous and really downright dangerous, and they were just starting to get a taste of it. If it was this bad taking on lowly street gangs, how the heck did Robin work his way up to tangling with the likes of Two-Face, or the Joker?

"Dudes, does this kinda remind you of those self-help books?" Gar asked hesitantly. "The ones that break life down into successes and, uh, learning experiences?"

Raven blinked and Victor frowned, getting where Gar was going with that.

Surprisingly, Robin favored him with a slight smile. "Life is a series of learning experiences," he said. "Success and failure are just details."

"Yo, did Batman tell you that?" Victor asked, slightly surprised.

"Placations aren't really his style."

"Ah."

"So," Garfield piped up, "that's it, right? I mean, there endeth the lesson"

"The night wasn't over yet," Robin said by way of reply.

"But we had nothing to do with what happened next!" Victor protested.

"Yeah!" Garfield agreed. "It's not our fault that Mal Reynolds guy dropped in and stole the show."

"Mal _Duncan_," Raven corrected him.

"Yeah, well, whatever dudes. We _so_ had nothing to do with that."

"He's right," said Robin, and suddenly three sets of startled eyes turned on him.

"I am?" "He is?" they all asked at once.

Robin nodded. "No one here could have predicted any outside involvement, especially not from an ordinary citizen, but take that as a lesson—"

"Expect the unexpected?" Victor offered helpfully.

"Don't let the unexpected catch you with your pants down."

"Huh?"

"He's referring to how we just stood there while Duncan fought our fight," Raven pointed out.

"Oh yeah," Victor admitted. "We did, didn't we."

Robin's eye mask narrowed. "Catwoman has been known to help Batman take down other expert thieves in Gotham, but afterwards she always tries to make off with the goods, hoping Batman would be distracted by her sudden do-gooding. Never assume that enemies of your enemies are really your friends. Duncan could have easily turned on you, and you would have been caught looking."

"Well what _should_ we have done?" Gar questioned impatiently. "I mean, if you hadn't a dropped in on us like that?"

"When I 'dropped in,' your attention immediately shifted to me. None of you were paying attention to Duncan, _or_ to the unconscious gang members. The criminals could have escaped, and any one of them — including Duncan — could have had a gun on them."

"So what were we just supposed to ignore you?" Victor asked, slightly incredulous.

"What did you think I was doing when I entered the scene?" Robin redirected.

"Coming down to lecture our butts off?" Gar offered, only half joking.

"You came because of Duncan," Raven declared.

Robin nodded. "Mal Duncan was an unknown element. As soon as he entered the scene, the entire equation changed."

"So you needed to make sure he wasn't gonna blow our brains out?" Gar asked, slightly incredulous because the underlying truth harsher still.

"You're missing the point," said Robin. "Whatever my reason for being there, you already know who and what I am. I'm not saying that you should have ignored me — the Mad Hatter could have taken control of my brain or Clayface could have impersonated me — but in _focusing _on me, you completely ignored both Duncan — whose threat level you hadn't ascertained yet — and the criminals, who were your original objective."

"You mean we needed to keep an eye on you, Duncan, _and_ the unconscious gangbangers?" Victor asked.

"There are three of you, aren't there?" Robin replied.

The three in question sighed, slouching slightly in their chairs.

"We suck," Garfield declared despondently.

"You're learning," Robin corrected. "Human or not, no one on Earth is perfect. We're all going to make mistakes and there's nothing we can do about that. The catch-22 is that, in this business, we're not _allowed_ to make mistakes because when we slip up people die. It sucks but it's the way it is."

"So you're saying that we have to be perfect even though that's impossible?" Victor asked incredulously.

"He did say it was a catch-22," Raven pointed out.

"I'm saying that you need to come as close to perfect as possible and then pray that its enough."

Garfield blinked hesitantly. "Um, Robin? Did you ever, you know, make a mistake like that?"

"That's the beauty of being a team," Robin deflected. "Batman covers for my mistakes, just as I cover for his — and Batgirl, when she's around. If I'm distracted, they're not. If they miss a clue, I don't. Now we're eight eyes and four minds — we can make each other better. Perfect team dynamics _are_ possible. They just take a lot of work. It's still not one hundred percent, but it'll do in a pinch."

"Did you have that with the original Titans?" Victor asked.

"Sometimes," Robin answered truthfully.

"Is that why you aren't together anymore?" Garfield asked.

"Who says we aren't?" was Robin's cryptic reply.

"He's baiting me again, isn't he," Gar declared.

"So there _is_ a learning curve," Raven announced.

Garfield stuck his tongue out at her.

"So is that it?" Victor asked. "I can't think of anything else we did wrong."

"Just one more thing," Robin answered. Then he ran a hand through his spiked hair, and Raven might have guessed that he was suddenly unsure of himself. "Look, I know you three aren't, well — it's not like you can easily hide who you are when you're walking down the street, and giving you a mask isn't exactly going to do much to disguise you. But even still," and here he looked directly at Garfield, "you should avoid using your real names out there."

"What?" Victor asked. "You mean we need aliases?"

Robin smirked. "Exactly."

"Sweet!" Garfield celebrated. "Dude, I already know mine. I'm gonna be Beast Boy!"

Victor blinked and Robin arched an eyebrow.

"Beast Boy?" Raven asked, sounding unsure.

Garfield simpered. "That's what they used to call me," he explained. "The first time I went to public school. They tried 'Lizard Boy' first, but 'Beast' is easier to say. Fewer syllables. "

"You want your superhero name to be an insult?" Raven asked, honestly surprised.

"Everyone always tells me that I shouldn't be ashamed of who I am," said Garfield. "I never was, not really. In a way, it's like the way I look is a constant reminder of my parents, and I don't have many of those. But I was embarrassed — I mean, who wouldn't be, right? But now that who I am is a hero, I want everybody to know… I'm not embarrassed anymore."

Robin nodded gravely. 'Little Robin' was his mother's nickname for him, and he didn't have much to remember his parents by, either. "Beast Boy it is," he said definitively.

"Cyborg," said Victor, nodding once to himself. "My dad tried to tell me once that _what_ I am is different from _who_ I am. Well everyone who looks at me sees this," he half-heartedly gestured to the cybernetic half of his face. "They don't see me, Victor Stone. They see a Cyborg, so Cyborg's what they all can call me."

"Cyborg," Garfield repeated, as though tasting the word. Then he smiled. "I like it!"

Then everybody looked at Raven.

"Raven," she said authoritatively.

"Uh, but that's your real name," Gar reminded her.

"You all have families," she said to them. "People you need to protect. I don't. Not in this dimension. The enemy knowing my name means nothing because there is no one I can be used against."

"Well, Raven sounds like a codename anyway," Victor pointed out.

Her eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He's right," Gar backed up his friend. Then he winced. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course."

Raven glared at him.

"You're all sure?" Robin asked, breaking the tension.

"Yep."

"Uh huh."

Raven just nodded.

"Good," said Robin. "From now on, for all Titans' business, you'll be known as Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven."

"Dude, this is like, too cool for words!"

"We've got a hideout, we've got call-signs," Victor listed. "When do we get communicators?"

"When I can come up with four secure two-way transmitters so that our conversations can't be overheard and our locations can't be traced."

"Oh. Well, just give the word, dawg. I'll see if I can't make some."

Robin half-shrugged. "If you think you're up to it."

Victor's eyes lit up. "Up for it? I think I could get _extra credit_ for it!"

Garfield laughed and Robin smirked.

"Is that all?" Raven asked.

Robin nodded. "For tonight. I'd like us to meet again on Tuesday. I have a few teamwork activities I want us to try."

"What? Like trust falls and stuff?" Gar asked.

Robin's smirk returned. "Something like that."

"Heh, Gar's gonna have to be a gorilla if he thinks he wants to catch me."

"Dude, let Raven catch you with her telekinesis."

Raven groaned tiredly, putting a hand to her temple.

"You all should get going," Robin told them.

"Why?" Victor asked, standing up. "Hot date?"

"Patrolling," Robin clarified.

"Wow dude," said Garfield. "You really know how to live it up."

Robin frowned at him.

"Right, right, we're going, we're going."

Garfield and Victor stood together and Raven joined them. Then in bright flash of darkness Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven disappeared into the astral plane.

When they were gone and the supernatural wind abruptly died, Robin leaned forward, bracing his palms against the tabletop with locked elbows. He hung his head and inhaled slowly and then released the breath in a long, controlled sigh. He stayed like that for several moments before finally straightening and arching his back. Then he erased the whiteboard and pushed the chairs in.

"I'm in over my head," he appraised matter-of-factly. Then, stifling another sigh, he armed the elaborate security system and left the lair, locking the door behind him.

Now Robin stood outside. He saw the research plant off in the distance, florescent lights shining in numerous windows, and knew that the third shift had only just begun. Then his eyes drifted through the plant's massive parking lot, sparsely populated now, to the low juniper hedging that separated the lot from the small expanse of nouveau woodland he was currently standing in. When Drake Industries took over they planted cherry blossoms here, and tonight the unusually warm night air was thick with the scent of them. Just behind him, near where the plant's official boundary ended and the state parkland began, was the trapdoor entrance to the lair. One of his earliest modifications was camouflaging that door, and now it was adorned with dirt and leaves and grass blades and blended in perfectly in this narrow grassy meadow-like buffer between the state forest and the structured rows of cherry blossoms.

Robin inhaled deeply, savoring the night for a few lingering moments before finally making his way back to the real world. He still had a patrol to make, and he'd left the Red Bird hidden several blocks away.

* * *

Catch-22: A no-win dilemma or paradox, similar to "damned if I do, damned if I don't." For example, _You can't get a job_ _without experience, but you can't get experience unless you have a job—_ _it's Catch-22_. The term gained currency as the title of a 1961 war novel by Joseph Heller, who referred to an Air Force rule whereby a pilot continuing to fly combat missions without asking for relief is regarded as insane, but is considered sane enough to continue flying if he does make such a request.

From _The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms_


	3. Lessons in detective work

**Kane's Pier**  
**Columbus** **Holiday**  
**2 a.m.**

Robin emerged from the shadows down by the docks. Special Agent Hernandez was waiting for him.

"Don't you have a curfew or something?"

"You called, agent. I answered."

"Yeah I called, but I didn't expect you until tomorrow."

"That device I gave you is a pager, not an appointment calendar."

"Yeah I see that." Hernandez frowned and reached into his trench coat. Robin stiffened imperceptibly but relaxed again when the agent pulled out a file folder. "Listen, kid, I really hate to involve you in this, but my department's at our wits' end with this one and, quite frankly, it's too important to not ask for your help now that I've got it."

"What have you got?" Robin asked, all business.

Hernandez hesitated, remembering again that this young hero might not even be old enough to vote yet. "I need to ask you something, kid, and I want you to tell me straight. Did Batman let you work on all the cases that crossed his desk?"

Robin's eye mask narrowed. "Even the ones that involve children?" he ventured a guess.

Hernandez sighed again. "I don't know whether or not to feel grateful or depressed," he confessed as he handed the file over.

Robin opened the file and perused its contents. His lips pursed into a thin line and he gritted his teeth, but other than that he showed no outward signs of emotion. Once again Hernandez didn't know how to react to this. There were some seasoned agents in the bureau that wouldn't have been able to maintain such clinical detachment as they read through the information contained in that file.

Slowly Robin's eyes began to narrow.

"You've got something?" Hernandez asked hopefully.

"Perhaps," Robin answered guardedly. "I'll be in touch."

"I hope so," Hernandez replied honestly. Then he promptly turned around and walked back the way he came, leaving Robin free to conduct his disappearing act. Robin briefly wondered if this was a show of trust or one of authority before he took the invitation to meld back into the shadows and disappear.

* * *

**4:14 a.m.**

Mal Duncan was on his way to the train station from Gabriel's Horn after another closing shift. He'd barely made it three blocks when suddenly he heard a scuffling sound off to his left. Curious, he turned to investigate. He slipped his brass knuckles over his fingers as he cautiously made his way down the darkened alley.

"Hello?" he called out. A bold move, if not a bright one.

Robin briefly pondered that there was something to be said for that as he launched himself from the shadows. Before Duncan knew what hit him he was pinned to the ground with both hands wrenched behind his back. Robin held him by the wrists and stepped painfully over his spine in just the right spot to make him rethink any plans of moving his legs.

"What the hell!" Duncan called out. He didn't get a good look at his attacker and so had no clue who held him down. "Take the wallet," he called out. "Leather's worth more th'n what's inside anyway."

"I don't want your money," Robin spat at him. Duncan didn't immediately place the voice: it was quite a bit lower and colder than the last time he met the Boy Wonder. This voice would have sent shivers up his spine if it wasn't otherwise occupied.

"Then what _do_ you want? Man, I ain't got nuthin!"

"Oh I think you do," said Robin, digging his heel in a little deeper for good measure. His voice dripped jagged ice. "I think you've got information."

"_What?_ Hey, who the _hell_ are you, man?"

This time it was his shoulders that wrenched painfully. Duncan winced and gave an abbreviated cry.

"I ask the questions," Robin reminded him, and finally something in the voice clicked for Duncan.

"_Robin?_" he asked, half incredulous, half fearful. "What the hell do you want from me? I ain't no gangbanger or drug dealer or nuthin,' you know that!"

"Well _someone's_ been dealing out of your club, Mal," Robin informed him. His voice hadn't changed but he did loosen up on Duncan's spine just a bit.

"Man that's crazy!" Duncan protested. "When I was a bouncer I had to check everyone for stuff at the door — it's the rules and they ain't changed! Ain't no one can smuggle drugs in without the bouncers knowin' it!"

"So you say," Robin conceded sardonically. "But fourteen overdose victims say differently."

"Hey, there ain't been an OD at my club in over two years!"

Suddenly Duncan found himself flipped around, half sitting propped up against the side of a building. Robin used one hand to secure both of Duncan's writs above his head while his other hand had a fistful of Duncan's shirt to pull Mal's face to within inches of his own.

"Nine kids," he spat through grit teeth. "Ages fifteen to seventeen. And five adults, ages eighteen to twenty-two. The coroner's report wasn't pretty — especially the victims' photographs post-mortem — and you know what they had in common? Fresh hand stamps from area nightclubs, Mal, and two of them yours."

Duncan's mind was reeling. He blinked rapidly, shaking his head. "M-mine?"

"Someone's been making the rounds at the clubs, Mal, including yours. They've been in town since late August and are slick enough to attract the attention of the right tax bracket. That shouldn't leave too many possibilities, Mal. I want a name!"

"Man, I never saw no one!"

"Wrong answer!" Somehow Robin managed to flip Duncan back around. He was on his stomach again, Robin's boot in his spine and shoulders wrenched at painful angles. He grunted and winced in protest.

"Look I don't pay close attention to the crowd no more! I'm in the office a good part a the night!"

"Where there's closed-circuit television feeds streaming from all angles of the club," Robin hissed, almost taunting.

"Hey you think I got time to stare at the TV all night?" Duncan barked his question through the pain his body was resonating. "I guess they don't teach management in vigilante school."

"I want those tapes," Robin demanded.

"Sure," Duncan agreed sardonically. "Just give me your mailing address."

His arms were wrenched painfully again.

"I have yours," Robin assured him coolly. "I'll be in touch."

Suddenly the pressure lifted. Duncan quickly rolled his shoulders and got his hands back underneath him again. However, when he pushed himself up he found himself alone in the alley.

* * *

**Titans' Lair  
Tuesday, ** **9 p.m.**

The three crime fighters-in-training had entered their secret hideout at the appointed time, but instead of finding a relaxed Robin in full teaching mode, they found someone quite different standing at the head of their table, waiting for them. The cool, fluorescently lit room seemed colder, the shadows more pronounced in his presence, as if he were somehow responsible for the darkness. Quite a feat for smallish young man in a traffic light-patterned costume, but the juxtaposition only added to the jarring surrealism.

"Something tells me we're not gonna get around to those trust falls," Beast Boy, né Garfield Logan, offered up to the oppressive silence as he and his fellow newbies hesitantly marched forward. His comment was greeted by silence, and he simpered slightly, toying with his collar, shallowly breathing the stale are.

With unsure steps, one by one the Titans found their places at the table under Robin's stone-faced gaze, his eyes sweeping about, Starlite lenses masking their movements, until they all were seated. When they got there, they saw in front of Robin on the table three unsealed manila envelopes and what appeared to be two long, rolled posters on plain paper. Maps perhaps? They couldn't be sure.

"Okay Titans, listen up. Our benefactor at the FBI has dropped this one in our laps, and we have to make good on it." Robin paused long enough to slide an envelope across the table to each of his teammates. "This case might hit close to home," he continued, warning them. "There's a new designer drug on the market, and Nassau County is the proving ground."

"Drug dealing?" Beast Boy asked with a scrunched up face. "In yuppiesville?"

Cyborg scoffed. "I know we don't actually _remember_ the eighties, but trust me, the rich like their drugs too. They just don't usually buy 'em on street corners in bad neighborhoods."

Robin nodded. "Take a look at those files — what do you see?"

Silence as Cyborg and Beast Boy joined Raven in directing their full attention to what was in front of them. Robin had cleansed the file some when he copied it, of course. The crime scene photographs were removed and the autopsy photographs were limited to just the victim's faces and blown up shots of the relevant hands for the ones that had nightclub stamps. He preferred to ease his new teammates into the more grizzly part of crime fighting, especially since the paid professionals had gathered sufficient evidence already — even if they didn't know quite what to do with it.

And Robin wondered about that, too. Not that he wasn't cynical enough to believe that the feds really _were _that incompetent, but something about their investigation wasn't sitting right.

"They all overdosed," Raven eventually announced, interrupting Robin's musings. He grit his teeth at the statement of the blatantly obvious. After all, he had been rather encouraging the tendency.

"Wait a sec," Cyborg interjected. "One guy was found dead at work, and another girl keeled over during gym class. You gotta have brass ones if you're getting high in places like that."

"Or pills," Beast Boy added quietly.

Raven fixed him with a scrutinizing gaze.

"You know, something small and portable? Maybe looks like aspirin that you can choke 'em back without anyone being the wiser?"

Cyborg frowned. "Maybe so, but still, getting high in school? That's not something I'd expect coming from a… honor roll student who volunteers at an animal shelter," he finished, reading from the file.

"Aren't we supposed to expect the unexpected," Raven asked him.

"Well, yeah, but then there was the guy at work — junior forklift operator. That's not a job you ever wanna tackle stoned — and don't they drug-test you before you can get those types of jobs anyway?" Cyborg looked imploringly at Robin.

Robin nodded. "They do."

"See!"

"The young man was in and out of juvenile court," Raven pointed out. "Most of his cases were drug-related."

"But he'd only had the job a few months," Cyborg argued. "How'd he get it — faked his drug test?"

"He wouldn't be the first," Raven reminded him.

Cyborg grumbled.

Robin stood patiently.

"Even if he did fake the test," Beast Boy spoke up at last, "and was dumb enough to use at work, there were only… two, with history of drug use and the other was a… NYU student who got busted for pot last year and was kicked off campus," Beast Boy informed them as he read from the file. "What's up with the others? Is the bad guy trying to pop their drug cherries or something?"

"Hey just cuz the others have never been caught, that doesn't mean they haven't experimented or anything."

Beast Boy frowned at Cyborg. "Cynic."

"What?" Cyborg shrugged. "Statistics have shown that at least seventy percent of high schoolers have tried pot at least once."

"Should we care whether or not the victims may or may not have smoked marijuana?" Raven asked. "It hardly seems relevant in their deaths."

Mentally Robin sighed. In a passing thought he made a note to teach them how to better interpret a toxicology screen. He'd thought with Victor Stone's background — but then, why would he have delved into something so specific? Not everybody had taken basic chemistry at age eleven, he reminded himself. Even Roy Harper had been thirteen.

"I'm just trying to find a way to connect the victims," Cyborg pointed out, as the conversation continued on around Robin's musings.

"With what?" Beast Boy asked. "Eight girls, six guys; five in high school, seven in college, and two in vocational jobs. They weren't even all white, what with that Vietnamese girl and that Indian guy."

"Bangladeshi," Raven corrected.

"Gesundheit."

"Nnnnggh..."

Robin's frown deepened slightly. The goal of tonight was to get them started with detective work, but he couldn't let them talk in circles forever. This wasn't a debate club. He'd give them another twenty or so, and if they hadn't figured it out by then he'd fill in the rest of the puzzle for them. He needed to discuss strategy for this case at some point tonight, too.

"If we don't connect the victims somehow," Cyborg continued, "we'll never figure out where they're getting the drugs."

"But they've got, like, nothing in common!" Beast Boy groused. "They don't even _live_ in the same area."

"Maybe there _is no_ connection," Raven voiced.

"What do you mean?" Cyborg asked her.

"Maybe the victims aren't taking the drugs by choice. Perhaps they're being poisoned."

Beast Boy made a face. "You've got serious issues, you know that?"

"I'm just saying it's possible."

"Yeah, well, even if you're right," Cyborg hedged, "they'd _still_ need something in common. How else would the bad guy find them?"

"Okay dudes… and dudette, brainstorming time!" Beast Boy announced. Then he stood from his chair and breezed passed Robin on his way to the whiteboard.

The Boy Wonder swiveled his stance and now stood leaning back up against the table, facing Beast Boy. He crossed his arms and observed the changeling with interest.

"Okay, we know a lot about what they _don't_ have in common," he said as he began writing. In sloppy yet still legible script the words _gender_, _race_, _age_, and _hometown_ were scrawled and then struck through. "What else?"

"Let's stop looking at the victims for a moment," Cyborg offered, his nose buried in some printout. "What about this drug they're taking?"

"Robin said it was 'designer,'" Raven reminded them.

"That means it was made in a lab," Beast Boy concluded. Then he frowned. "Drug labs are risky businesses — seems like one's always accidentally blowing up in Gotham."

"Yeah, well, it's the el-cheapo versions that blow up," Cyborg informed him. "I'll bet the ones, say, backed by some of your well-funded nut-jobs, were state of the art."

"I wouldn't exactly call nerve gas and weaponized hallucinogens 'designer drugs,' dude," Beast Boy pointed out somberly.

Robin tensed briefly as he reflected on how little he really knew of this situation. Just because he'd figured out the street-level in the totem pole, that didn't mean he had the first clue where the source was. Sometimes you had to start at the bottom and work your way up.

"The drug seems to… stimulate the various pleasure centers of the brain," Raven answered the almost-forgotten question, her eyes still scanning the papers in front of her.

"Well that narrows it down!" Beast Boy grumbled. "That could mean anything from heroin to ecstasy!"

No one saw the sharp glance Robin threw in his direction from behind those Starlite lenses. He was rather interested to know how Garfield Logan was so familiar with the neurological effects of illegal drugs, but that was a question for another day.

Meanwhile, Cyborg was snappin his fingers. "Ecstasy! Guys, check it out!" He swiftly and sloppily shuffled through the papers and photographs in his file until he found what he was looking for — five close-ups of five different hands, each with a stamp in varying degrees of smudginess. Beast Boy walked back to the table and stood over Cyborg's shoulder as he laid them out, and Robin turned back around.

"What are they?" Raven asked, having found her own copies and laid them out similarly before her.

"Hand stamps," Cyborg informed her. "The kind you get at clubs."

"Dude! People do drugs in clubs!"

"Two different clubs…" Raven mused, noting how two of the five were red and the other three were black.

"Ah, I think that's _three_ different clubs," Cyborg corrected as he scanned the images with a magnifying eye. "One of those black ones is circular."

Raven squinted at the photograph. Sure enough there were two obviously square designs, but the last, overly smudged one, was definitely circular.

"So whose hands are those?" Beast Boy asked.

"Four women and one man, ages eighteen to twenty," Raven supplied.

"That makes sense," Cyborg concluded. "A lot of places mark the under-aged so they can't buy alcohol."

"But what of the minors?" Raven asked.

"Hell-_oh!_" Beast Boy emphatically droned. "Ever heard of a fake ID?"

"Yeah," Cyborg agreed. "They would have claimed to be old enough to drink, so no hand-stampyness for them."

Beast Boy grinned and streaked back to the whiteboard. He wrote _clubbing _in large, bold letters. "Well dudes, do we take it to the professor?"

Three sets of eyes immediately fixated on Robin, who had once again tracked Beast Boy's movements and was now standing at an angle, hip resting against the table and arms casually folded. He had been doing his best to bite back a grin — wanting to refrain from dropping visual hints so as to force them to think it through on their own. However, when Beast Boy asked for his opinion, he didn't stop himself smiling at the impressionable green changeling.

"That's the best working theory I have," he admitted, rather proud of his team for coming to the right conclusions this quickly. Of course, he'd rather streamlined the evidence for them, but that didn't detract from their achievement in his eyes. After all, this was their first exercise with detective-work.

Cyborg sat back in his chair with a shameless grin and Beast Boy went so far as to whoop for joy. Even Raven looked pleased, Robin noted, as he unfurled the first of the two rollups.

"This is an off-center map of the county," he explained. "I've marked the locations of the victims' houses in red, and the three nightclubs — _Soto_, _The Taproom_, and _Gabriel's Horn_, in black."

"Isn't _Gabriel's Horn_ Mal's club?" Beast Boy asked. He shared a glance with Cyborg.

"Each victim lived within fifteen miles of one of those clubs," Robin continued as though he hadn't been interrupted.

"What are the blue hash marks?" Raven asked.

"Bus stops," Robin supplied. "All but two of the victims lived within four blocks of one."

"Did the ones who don't have cars?" Beast Boy asked.

"Doesn't matter," said Cyborg. "They could have carpooled with someone or taken a cab."

Robin nodded. "The bus system makes it impossible to tell which unstamped victims went to which clubs, but if we assume that most chose the club closest to home, then we can deduce that the first three deaths came out of the _Soto _club, the next two came from _The Taproom_, the next four came from _Gabriel's Horn_, and then they cycled back to _Soto _for the next four. The most recent victim has a hand stamp from _The Taproom_."

"That accounts for the five weeks since the first deaths," Cyborg observed. Then he frowned. "Those creeps would have been at _The Taproom_ all weekend."

"That means more people are going to be turning up dead this week," Beast Boy concluded morosely. Then he looked at Robin. "What do we do?"

"We don't know if the dealers are still operating out of _The Taproom_, but if they stick to their pattern we _do_ know that they'll be selling out of Gabriel's Horn next weekend."

"Dude! We gotta tell Mal!"

"Mr. Duncan has already been made aware of the situation," Robin informed them. "He'll be providing us with the security feeds from his nightclub. Hopefully something has been caught on tape."

"Do you have any idea how many hours of feed that means?" Cyborg gawked. "Even if we just focus on that particular weekend, the club's gotta have at least two cameras going…"

"Four cameras," Robin corrected. "And we're focusing on the week leading up to that weekend, Monday through Sunday."

Victor palmed a hand across his face. "This is gonna take days."

"Dude, can we make popcorn?"

Robin smirked ever so slightly. He remembered when such details seemed daunting to him, too.

"Tomorrow's meeting starts at eight. Bring your own food."

"Uh, how many nights is this gonna take?" Beast Boy asked.

"Why? Do you have something more important to do?" Robin challenged with a Bat-like glare.

Beast Boy simpered. "Just homework," he confessed.

"You're done by noon on Tuesday," Robin reminded him, "and only have two subjects on Wednesday. Nine hours should be sufficient to complete the work for two courses."

"Says you. I have a biology lab report due Wednesday — do you have any idea how long those take?"

"I'll help you with that, little buddy," Cyborg offered congenially. "We can do them together."

Thanks Vic — er, _Cyborg_." Beast Boy caught himself at the last moment.

"I don't suppose I have to remind you," Raven said to Robin once Beast Boy's dilemma was solved. "My class doesn't end until nine tomorrow."

"You're watching a three hour documentary on the early middle ages," Robin informed her. "You can rent it from the school library and watch the last hour before class next week."

"How would you know that?" Raven asked him, only the barest hints of accusation in her voice. "The syllabus — _which I didn't show you_ — wasn't that specific."

"Dude, he's _Robin_," said Beast Boy, as though that explained everything — which it rather did, come to that.

The vigilante in question allowed himself a small smirk.

"So, is the meeting adjured?" Cyborg asked.

Robin nodded. "Go home, get plenty of rest, and make sure you stay on top of your school assignments. Tomorrow's going to be a long night, and unless we're incredibly lucky, the next few nights will be, too."

"I thought guys like you didn't believe in luck," Beast Boy pointed out.

"Stay in this business long enough, you learn to believe in just about everything," Robin informed him, but he seemed to scowl when he said it.

Cyborg shook his head. "Heh, Robin the Boy Mulder."

Beast Boy laughed but Robin's scowl deepened. Raven blinked, not getting the reference.

"Get going," Robin directed, his voice a growl. "I'll see you all tomorrow night."

"Heh, later dude."

"Yeah, see ya!"

And the three new Titans left the lair, allowing the trapdoor to slam shut behind them.

When they were gone, Robin allowed himself a heavy sigh. Tonight had gone surprisingly well. The three of them were able to talk it out in relatively short order. They stayed on task, and worked well in group discussion. More importantly, they all took the case seriously, which had been a problem with his last team. Sometimes it seemed as though the previous incarnation of Titans was more interested in hanging with friends and being out from under their mentors' shadows rather than with establishing any credibility as a viable crime-fighting force. Of course, the Boy Wonder wasn't entirely innocent of that, either. Sometimes their meetings consisted entirely of a game of catch-up with each other's lives, usually while they answered the fan mail.

Dick Grayson shuddered when he remembered the fan mail. Superman would deliver it to their hideout at the start of every meeting on behalf of the Daily Planet, the Titans official mailing address. Clark Kent was always harassed by Perry White for the influx of mail taking up one of the basement storage closets, as it had been the mild-mannered reporter's idea in the first place to enable troubled youths to get in touch with their heroes, but the Metropolitan newspaper had won numerous awards and honors from humanitarian organizations because of it so that kept the hem-hawing to a minimum.

Bushels and bushels of letters would arrive every week, and for every legitimate plea for help or advice there were at least five product endorsement requests and ten gushing love letters. Superman did his super-powered best to remove all the ones with suggestive photographs, but sometimes he missed a few — which Roy had scrap-booked over Donna's staunch disapproval.

On a normal day, Wally answered all the fan mail that wasn't addressed to a specific Titan, since he could write at speeds that sometimes caused the paper to catch fire if he wasn't careful. Donna wrote a thoughtful letter to every girl with a self-esteem problem (which were most of them, unfortunately) and answered all the appropriate pleas for a charitable public appearance. Roy played fast and loose with the charity fund (comprised of donations from the Queen Trust, the Wayne Foundation, and a number of other organizations looking for a few tax breaks or good PR) to pay for things like medical treatment for the uninsured and new facilities and equipment for Boys and Girls Clubs. Garth, the least publicized member of the group, answered the few letters addressed to him and helped Wally with the bulk mail. Sometimes he shared the public appearance bill with Donna, but only for coastal cities. And Dick Grayson? He typed the replies to his own fan mail and signed the letters with his off hand as it wouldn't do to have samples of his handwriting floating about, and he decided which pleas for help warranted their actual involvement.

A few pizzas, a vending machine's worth of soda, someone's CD playing in the portable stereo, and five friends gathered around a round table, reading letters from their adoring fans and making fun of each other for their contents; just a bunch of kids in their clubhouse, though occasionally something serious happened. Some of those letters had begged help with drug or gang problems, which had led the Titans into fifteen different cities around this country and three in Canada on what Roy had dubbed their 'weekend warrior' missions, and only once had it led to something serious enough for none of them to object when the Justice League stepped in. At the time, they'd been very proud of their accomplishments as a team, and Robin had many cherished memories from that period in his life.

But that was then. This is now, with a new team, a new city, and an older and (more cynical if not) wiser Robin, and their first real case was bound to turn up more corpses before it was solved. He could only hope that the impending victims wouldn't be kids his teammates recognized; they didn't deserve such a personal introduction to crime-fighting.

No one did.

Robin sighed again, the hiss of breath echoing loudly in the stillness of the empty room. He wasn't going to solve this case through reminiscing, nor would it help his teammates to adjust to their new lives if he was too focused on that newness. They sought him out because they wanted to be heroes and he had the will and means to make it happen if they had the resolve to see it through. Of those things he has no doubt, but assurances wouldn't help them the first time they found themselves faced with solving a crime close to their hearts, and the longer he could delay that, the better off they'd be. It was better that they were in this game because of a desire to do good things — to be heroes, different from him and better because he was here, as Batman was here, not to do good but to prevent bad. A dark defender, and not a hero at all.

He also wasn't going to solve this case by dwelling in morbidity, he realized with a mirthless laugh. He checked the time — just after ten. That would put his impending visit of _Gabriel's Horn_ around eleven, a bit early for his tastes. Thankfully though Dick remembered to grab his sociology textbook before leaving tonight; he could park the Red Bird in some secluded spot and study for tomorrow's test for a few hours before putting in his appearance.

* * *

**Gabriel's Horn  
Wednesday, ** **1:21 am**

Robin stashed the Red Bird near the mouth of the alley that ran behind the club. He fired his grapnel and took to the roofs until he stood atop the nightclub. Even up here he could hear snippets of the manic techno beat that raged inside. As this was a weeknight, the club would be closing at two and so Robin had at least forty minutes to kill before he could talk to Duncan. He spent that time first surveying the layout of the roof and the view from all angles. _Gabriel's Horn_ was in a tightly packed section of town, bordered on one side by a pizza place that kept hours in tune with the nightclub, and a Chinese takeout restaurant on the other that closed at midnight; these three venues took up the entire block. There was a 7/11 across the street, a bank, an all-night Laundromat, a delicatessen, and a pub that catered to an older crowd than the club but also closed at two. Across the alley behind the club was an antique store, a jewelry store, the post office, and a Burger King that closed at eleven-thirty.

Robin frowned. He didn't like the close proximity of stores catering to the late-night crowd. The increased civilian population exponentially increased the risks, and unlike Gotham this town wasn't used to sudden eruptions of violence. He didn't realize how much he (and likely Batman) took Gotham's duck-and-cover mentality for granted until he was faced with the possibility of throngs of innocents who didn't have such programming. Anything done would have to wait until after midnight — twelve-thirty at the earliest — to ensure that everything that would be locked up _was_ locked up, and that even the last night-janitor had gone home.

The frown deepened when Robin realized that if he'd come early he could have seen when the Chinese place finished closing. He foresaw stakeouts in his very near future, except there was one slight problem with that. How could he do that _and _watch the surveillance videos with his team? Robin hung his head slightly, the frown turning into a positive scowl. Garth and Donna had been good at stake-outs, he remembered; patient and quiet. Wally and Roy were, to put it mildly, prone to distraction more often than not, but they would have done well if left to watch the videos together. Robin could have assigned himself to either pair without fear for the other.

Of course, falling to fond reminiscing wasn't going to solve this case any faster than dwelling on morbid thoughts, Robin chastised himself again with a shake of the head. He still had a half and hour to eat up before he could meet Duncan so he whipped out his grapnel. Better to familiarize himself more fully with this section of town — place visual cues alongside bland map coordinates and see what the streets, alleyways, and rooftops would do for him.

When he made his way back to the nightclub at a quarter passed two, Robin had conducted an extensive reconnaissance of the neighborhood. The surrounding blocks contained a few restaurants that would be closed well before midnight, a grocery store that may or may not have overnight deliveries (he'd have to check that out), and one other bar. The rest were various commercial buildings — stores and offices that kept normal business hours. After that the buildings petered out into the residential neighborhoods. All of the alleyways were clear, too, and every fire escape was secure and in working order. Decay hadn't come to Farmingdale yet, despite an increase in crime. How long, Robin wondered, before chain-link fences were erected or dumpsters left in strategic locations? How long before high windows were barred and fire escapes deliberately sabotaged? Not long, if his hunch was correct in that this narcotics ring traced back to organized crime. Not long at all, if there was no one to stop it.

Robin set his jaw with an audible (and Bat-like) grunt. Where were these thoughts coming from, anyway? He wasn't prone to a wandering mind — at least, not while behind the mask; not for a long, long time.

No matter though. It was well passed closing, time to talk to Duncan.

Robin perched on the edge of the roof overlooking the front entrance. The kitchen exit opened to the rear alley, but no one would take that route unless they favored walking in the dark (which he cynically doubted, especially since there were no cars parked that way), and the side fire exit was alarmed. That left the front door, and sure enough Robin saw the employees begin to trickle out, starting around two-thirty. Bouncers, bartenders, cooks, wait-staff... everyone except for Duncan, it seemed, had exited by three — time for Robin to make his appearance.

As the building had no windows or skylights to speak of, he chose the kitchen entrance. Duncan hadn't yet activated the alarm, but the security cameras were still rolling and Robin made sure to keep his face turned away from the one at the door. The lock was picked in seconds, and Robin's night-vision compensated instantly for the increased darkness, washing his view of the kitchen in a sickly shade of green. He silently shut and relocked the door and then made his way past freezers and fryers to the entrance to the dance hall.

Actually, Robin found himself standing behind the bar and he took a moment to chide himself for his naiveté. _Of course_ food orders would be placed at the bar, or else dropped off there by wait-staff, but under-aged Dick Grayson had never ventured into establishments like this (except in Star City, but then Roy hadn't brought him there for the food), and Robin's only time in similar places was spent bashing heads. Still a lot to learn, the detective's apprentice reminded himself with a grim smile as he took stock of his location. There was no exit from behind the bar and so he vaulted over it, deftly avoiding the beer taps and the overhead rack of hanging glasses.

Now in the dancehall proper, Robin cast his green-hued gaze about the vast, empty warehouse that housed it. The dance floor was huge and took up the center of the space. The back wall was lined with arcade games; the bar stopped halfway up the left wall and had booths finishing the distance, with two parallel columns of tables forming a rectangular dining area. The control booth for the sound equipment and the general and stage lighting sat in the back right corner, and the raised platform that served as a stage abutted the right wall just ahead of it. The entire area was roped off right now, as there hadn't been a live band tonight. Ahead of that, lining the rest of the wall towards the front, were three more columns of booths and tables.

Robin resisted the urge to whistle as he took in the impressive immensity of the club. Instead he made his way forward. The staircase to the second level sat to the right of the main entrance, and Duncan's office had to be upstairs.

As Robin ascended he realized that he should have done a more thorough background check on this place. The blueprints wouldn't have been hard to access through his uplink to the Bat computer, but it was either that or finish up his latest psychology essay. How he was going to balance being a fulltime student _and_ a fulltime vigilante with a team to manage was currently beyond him, but he wasn't fool enough to not realize that failing as Dick Grayson wasn't nearly as dangerous as failing as Robin. Reminding himself that he shouldn't take risks like this in the future (especially the night after lecturing his team about the dangers of flying blind), he idly wondered how Bruce managed to run Wayne Enterprises while devoting most of his life to protecting Gotham and helping the Justice League.

_Alfred_, Robin concluded with an amused headshake. _Alfred and Lucius Fox_.

The club's second floor held pool tables with a small bar along one wall and dartboards along the rest, except for the back left corner and its door labeled 'private.' Robin's expression hardened instantaneously and automatically as he crossed the distance to that door with sure but silent strides. When he reached the threshold his inner Bat decided against knocking, but he wasn't so pretentious that he would try to open the door silently. Instead he grabbed the doorknob, and with an almost cocky air of nonchalance, turned it and allowed the door to swing open in front of him.

To Duncan's credit he heard either the soft click of the door release or the faint groan of the hinges because he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of an intruder. "Man, how the _hell_ did you get in here?" he groused, his tone conveying aggravation but his body language betrayed him.

"I told you I'd be in touch," Robin replied, ignoring the question. "I want those tapes."

Confusion flashed through Duncan's expression only briefly before he remembered. "Yeah, yeah," he muttered on the tails of a long-suffering sigh. Then he made his way out from behind his desk and walked over to the bookshelf on the opposite wall. The top three rows were full of VHS tapes.

"What dates?" Duncan asked when he reached the bookshelf.

"September fifth through the twelfth," Robin supplied.

Duncan glanced askance at him. "You want eight days worth of film from four cameras? You got pockets in that getup big enough for thirty-two tapes?"

Robin's response was to reach into a back pocket of his utility belt and retrieve what appeared to be a small pouch. Then suddenly he snapped his wrist and the pouch unfolded like a parachute, revealing itself to be a sizable canvas bag. It was normally used for collecting large pieces of evidence (such as clothing), but it would suffice well enough here and he tossed it to Duncan, who shook his head in apathetic amusement as he caught it.

"Here ya go," he said, sighing slightly as he gathered up a stack of tapes and allowed them to tumble in to the bag. He held the bag securely as their weight further stretched the canvas to its true size, and then he placed it on the ground. Three more stacks followed and the bag was mostly full. Then he pulled the drawstring closed.

"Just outta curiosity, are you really gonna watch 'em all? That's gotta be what — over two hundred hours?"

"The tapes," Robin directed, once again ignoring Duncan's question.

Duncan sighed yet again as he stooped to pick up the bag, which was actually fairly heavy. He swung it over to Robin with a suppressed grunt, but the Boy Wonder caught it easily around its bulky center.

"Am I ever gonna get those back?"

"If you want them. Unless they're needed as evidence."

Robin shifted the bag so that he was carrying it under one arm and then turned to go. The tapes and the overall setup of the nightclub precluded him from making the typical Bat-style exit so he didn't bother to try slipping away unnoticed.

"Hey, Robin?"

Not that Duncan would have let him anyway. Robin paused in the doorway, tensing slightly but not turning back around.

"If some sicko really _is_ dealing outta my club… I hope you catch 'im."

With his face safely hidden, Robin allowed some of the ice to melt from his expression. He repressed a sigh, and a trained eye might have seen some of the tension deflate from his body.

"So do I," he replied, his voice a bit softer than it had been. Then before any type of awkwardness could descend into the silence Robin exited the office, pulling the door shut behind him with his free hand.

Two hundred and twenty-eight hours worth of video footage, Robin mused dejectedly as he made his way out of _Gabriel's Horn_ and back to his car. Fortunately he only had to pay serious attention to one of the cameras (the one above the bar), which cut the total down to fifty-seven hours. If this had occurred in Gotham, the main computer in the cave would have been rigged to play four tapes at once, and the Dynamic Duo would have their answer in less than fifteen hours.

Robin scowled.

This wasn't Gotham.

This was Long Island, and he didn't have the Batman's resources. He didn't even have the Titans' resources. What he did have was three sets of untrained eyes, one TV-VCR, and fifty-seven hours of video footage to pour through — in between class time and homework.

The scowl melted into resignation as he shifted the Red Bird into gear and sped away, bound for the Lair. Given the drive time, he could get a four-hour head start on those tapes before class with Dr. Beach at nine. Finally he sighed.

"Sleep's overrated anyway."


	4. Interlude: shades of green

**Sector 2828  
Outskirts of the Vega System**

"Captain, we're approaching the designated coordinates."

"Good. Helm, ease us down to light speed threshold and prepare to switch to the sub-light engines. Do we have visual?"

A chorus of 'aye captains' from the helm and various technicians, then:

"Not yet, sir. Time estimated to visual confirmation… forty seconds."

"Do we have anything on scanners?" There was a stretching pause where an answer should have been. "Lieutenant Barand'r?" The captain pivoted in his seat to regard his sensory officer, bent low over his workstation on the far side of the bridge.

"I… I'm not sure, sir. The scanners aren't finding anything. At the very least, we should be picking up the energy output signatures of hyperdrive engines, but… there's nothing out there, sir."

"What do you mean, there's nothing out there?" the first officer asked incredulously. "What about the fleet?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, sirs. Either everyone's powered down, or—"

"We have visual range," the helmsman announced, interrupting whatever alternative the sensory officer might have provided for the apparent absence of the ships with which they were supposed to rendezvous.

"Good. Put the lieutenant's nothingness on screen. Maybe then we'll get some answers."

The front view screen blinked to life, revealing what looked to be a canvas of empty space. The captain blinked, frowned, and managed a slight 'harrumph.'

"Well..." Then he shook his head. "Are you sure you've got the right coordinates?"

The helmsman, sensory officer, and just about everyone else on the bridge went scrambling over their instruments.

"The navigation computer verifies our position, sir," the helmsman announced. "According to these readings we are approaching the rendezvous coordinates. ETA one minute and… eleven seconds."

"So where in X'Hal's name are they?" the first officer barked.

"We're getting nothing on our energy scans?" the captain asked his sensory officer, who nodded. "Try switching to a sonar scan."

The sensory officer complied and a moment later a series of sonar pings resounded dully in the background as the entire bridge crew directed their attention to ascertaining that this urgent puzzle hadn't arisen out of any error on their part.

"Sonar confirms, sir," the sensory officer announced a few moments later. "We're all alone out here."

The captain's frown only deepened, even as the first officer leaned over to whisper a question into his ear.

"The summons was encrypted?"

"Highest priority," the captain affirmed. "Only top members of the Defense Council have access to those codes."

"So we can't even comm them back."

"Sirs," the helmsman spoke up. "It could be possible that we just got here first."

"Out of seven ships? When we were the furthest away?" The first officer clearly didn't believe that for a moment.

"There could have been delays…" the helmsman obviously didn't believe his own logic, either.

The captain shook his head. "Who else is supposed to be here?

The first officer glanced at the control panel to his left and pressed a few buttons. "Dreadnaughts _Slopkaar, T'nermal, _and _Bliks_, along with the heavy cruisers _Mandand'r_ and _Glibnak_, the light cruiser _Tofnorm_, and one science vessel, the _Lapkul_."

The captain frowned again. "No. I know Captain D'Glit. He wouldn't be late to his own execution."

"I don't like this, sir. What could keep a dreadnaught from making the rendezvous?" the first officer couldn't help but ask.

"Nothing I'd care to run into," the captain replied. "Helm—" but his order was cut off by the sudden cry of their proximity alarms.

"Captain! Scanners are picking up tracers from sub-light engines! We've got multiple vectors dropping out of light speed, bearing four-six mark… two-eight!"

"On screen!" the first officer shouted, and instantly the picture of empty space blipped out and an array of green-steeled ships appeared.

"The Citadel!" the helmsman cried.

"They're firing!" the sensory officer shouted in warning, and then suddenly the viewscreen was washed out in a sea of shining light. In that instant the entire ship trembled and shook, sending everyone tumbling.

"Evasive maneuvers!" the captain shouted. "Guns! Return fire!"

"The primary weapons array isn't responding!" the gunnery officer yelled back as the ship pitched and dipped, the internal compensators unable to completely neutralize the feel of the ship dancing away from incoming enemy fire.

"Reroute control through the manual bypass!" the first officer bellowed, just as the ship rocked again. A geyser of sparks erupted from the sensory consol and Lieutenant Barand'r was blown back into his seat before collapsing back down onto his workstation. Green eyes stared unseeing at his reflection in the darkened glass.

"The manual bypass is jammed!" the gunnery officer answered once he regained his footing. "I can't—" This time the lights in the bridge winked out as the ship was pitched from the exploding impact of the Citadelian laser canons. Only half the emergency lights powered up a moment later, and in the sickly shadowed light the captain saw his gunnery officer crumpled over his workstation, blood splatter staining the nearby wall.

"We've lost the lateral controls!" the helmsmen shouted. "We won't be able to hold position!"

"There's an incoming transmission from the Citadel!" the captain heard his first officer announce, and only then did he notice that he was now manning what was left of the sensory controls.

The captain grit his teeth as the transmission played, audio-only.

"_THIS IS CITADELIAN OVERLORD MASHNA OF THE SEVENTH ARMADA! POWER DOWN YOUR VESSEL AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED!_"

"That'll be the day," the captain spat. "Death before surrender!" he cried, rising his fist in a warrior's salute.

"Death before surrender!" the remaining bridge crew echoed.

"Set the self-destruct sequence," the captain ordered. "Time-delay thirty seconds."

"Hopefully our shockwave will damage them," the first officer groused, upset but naturally accepting as he keyed in the correct sequence of commands. Then suddenly he swore, loudly, in Okaaran. "Sir! The computer won't respond to the self-destruct codes!"

"_What?_"

"The command prompts have been changed. I'm trying—" Another blast shook the ship, and the consol next to the first officer blew apart. "_D'nict thi X'Hal!_ We've lost the bridge computer!" There was an edge of panic in the first officer's voice as he turned around, abandoning the now useless consol behind him.

"Only a member of Fleet Command could have overridden our command codes," the captain realized suddenly, but his first officer was already a step ahead of him.

"Sir, we've been sabotaged!"

"_TAMARANEAN WARSHIP! IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY YOUR SHIP WILL BE TAKEN BY FORCE!_" the harsh voice of the Citadelian Overlord echoed mechanically through the universal translator.

"But, the priority signal—"

"We have been betrayed," the captain's announcement interrupted his helmsman, his voice eerily calm. "Do as he says," he ordered suddenly.

"_TAMARANEAN WARSHIP! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!_"

"Sir?" The first officer didn't believe his ears.

"Do as he says!" the captain repeated, shouting. "If that Citadelian slime insists on coming to visit, let's make sure to give them a proper welcome." With that, the captain ripped open a side panel in his command chair. He removed a laser rifle and tossed it back to his first officer, who caught it with a look of surprise that quickly melted into bloodthirsty anticipation. When the captain removed his own weapon he spared a moment to check it over thoroughly before priming it.

"Death before surrender," he said again, though this time his voice held more resignation than defiance. Then he reached over and pushed a button on his armrest.

"This is the captain speaking," his voice echoed all over the ship. "I want everyone armed and in full battle gear. We're about to receive some very unwelcome guests. Hold the airlocks for as long as you can, then lead them towards the engine room. There's more than one way to blow a ship out of the sky, and when we go I want to take as many of them with us as possible!"

His announcement made, the captain turned to what remained of his bridge crew and an unspoken understanding swept over the room. They each turned and fired on the computer terminals to prevent the Citadel from ever accessing them if their last stand failed and the ship survived. When they were through, the bridge was little more than a smoking husk.

"It's been a privilege," the captain said to his men, just as the blast doors were forced open. A second later and the only sound was the fizzing echo of laser fire.

* * *

* * *

**Sector 2814  
Justice League Watchtower**

All was quiet.

Usually that was a good thing. At work it meant that he could actually sit at his desk and quite possibly get things done instead of running back and forth between meetings and PR gigs – as if his company would just up and run itself while he was off babysitting VPs and smiling for the camera. On patrol it meant that he could be proactive, could take to the streets and maybe bust up a few crimes as they happened instead of jumping from police emergency to police emergency – as if he had nothing better to do than prance around like the SCPD's personal masked mascot. At home it meant that work was good, that his City was good, and that he could spend the afternoon watching the game instead of worrying about either one of them, especially now that Roy was back and Dinah was on sabbatical in Themyscira.

Yet on the Watchtower, on sentry duty, it meant only one thing.

Green Arrow was bored out of his superly-heroic mind.

Sentry duty wasn't usually such a dead-end gig, but with Superman currently moonlighting for NASA the Martian Manhunter was off practicing his acting skills in Metropolis, and that meant Green Arrow got to be bored to tears all by his lonesome. There wasn't even anyone he could call; Flash was at work, Diana was home (with Dinah, more's the pity), Lantern was busy with the corps, and Hawkman – the insufferable ass – had up and left them weeks ago. Behind his mask, Oliver Queen debated briefly whether or not he should call Bruce Wayne, if only because bugging the Bat at his day job held a certain devious appeal.

Of course, reason eventually outweighed whimsy and the archer decided against it. Aside from the venture not being worth the Bat's eventual retaliation, there was that little matter of their secret identities to worry about, because even if Bruce's desk phone was as secure as WayneTech could make it there were still a few Leaguers who'd be mighty curious as to why Green Arrow felt the need to chat up Bruce Wayne. Which was really too bad, because Ollie really wanted to talk shop – with or without the mask – because the head of Queen Industries wanted a second opinion on some potential tech ventures and Green Arrow's hackles had been up ever since Lantern, Hawkman, and Superman all suddenly had better things to do in outer space.

Or, maybe not.

The proximity alarm suddenly blared to life, the first intruding noise since Ollie stopped spinning in his chair, and in his surprise he barely managed to not fall out of it. When the monitors automatically switched over to an outside view they revealed the shimmering emerald blob growing steadily larger as the seconds ticked by. Apparently Lantern was finally paroled from Oa – and there his communicator just signaled to open the airlock. Ollie grinned. He hadn't seen Hal in nearly two months, and nothing beat the Watchtower Blues like catching up with an old friend.

* * *

"Hey buddy, welcome home!"

The first thing Hal Jordan saw when he stepped out of the airlock into the JLA embarkation room was Green Arrow lazing up against one of the bulkheads, hat askew and grinning like mad. He'd expected the Martian Manhunter; finding Ollie was pleasant surprise. He returned the smile wanly, exhaustion bleeding through the gesture despite its sincerity.

"Hey. Didn't expect to find you here."

"Sentry duty," Ollie explained.

"Where's J'onn?"

"Over in Metropolis pretending to be Superman."

"And Superman is...?"

"On loan to NASA."

Hal ran a gloved hand through his hair to scratch at the scraggly ends, half distracted by fact that it was getting a bit too long. "Huh. Weird."

Ollie shrugged. "Don't ask me. I just work here."

Hal snorted a laugh, his lips barely following through. "I'd say the same, but I dunno. I've been gone so long – have they revoked my membership yet?"

Hal had meant that as a joke, and Ollie reflexively paid lip service to the humor, but that comment got him thinking about Hawkman again. And of course, Hal noticed the awkwardness of the gesture.

"What is it?"

Ollie sighed around the effort to put his thoughts into words. "Well, it's funny you should mention membership, because right now we're one cape short, and it ain't yours."

Hal blinked behind his mask, stunned and curious and almost a little nervous.

"Hawkman quit."

"_What?_" The query came out low and cold. It fell with the stone that suddenly dropped, hard, into the bottom of his gut.

"Yeah. Turned in his communicator, loaded up what little he owned into that ugly-ass shuttle of his, and high-tailed it back to Zanzibar – or wherever the hell he's from."

"Thanagar," Hal absently supplied, his mind already racing light-years ahead. "Shit."

Hal started purposefully towards the doors, but it took Ollie a moment to register the fact. His mind had snagged on Hal's last word, because Green Lantern never swore. Never. It was like hearing Batman laugh, and the cognitive dissonance tripped up the rest of Ollie's mental processes to the point where he suddenly found himself a good eight steps behind.

"Ok, what'd I miss?" he asked, after jogging a bit to catch up to Hal, who'd already made it through the doors and into the corridor.

"Nothing." Lantern didn't even slow down.

Fortunately eight years spent as guardian to one Roy Harper had taught Ollie how roll his eyes and sigh without even breaking stride. "Uh huh, right." The deadpan sarcasm though he'd learned from Dinah.

They made it to the end of the corridor, with Lantern still half a step ahead, and he hit the call button for the elevator with a bit more force than necessary. Seeing as Ollie had just taken it himself not five minutes ago, the doors opened instantly, and Lantern stormed across the threshold as soon as the partition was wide enough. Ollie followed right behind, and saw his friend punch the button to take them back up to the observation deck. He waited until the doors dinged shut again before trying again to get some answers out of his friend.

"Alright GL, what gives?"

Hal's response was a tired sigh as he leaned back against the wall. Reclined, he brought one hand up to rub at his eyes behind the mask. "I don't know," Hal admitted at length. "Maybe it's nothing."

"Maybe what's nothing?"

"Trouble."

"You mean, maybe the trouble is nothing?"

Hal nodded. "Or maybe the nothing is trouble."

"Whoa, man, you been hanging with Dr. Fate lately? Quit talking in circles and tell me straight."

Another sigh, punctuated by the ding of the opening doors. "What do you know about Vega?" Hal asked as he led the way into the room and over towards one of the computers – stellar cartography, Ollie noted.

"The militant vegetarians?"

Hal's lips twitched slightly despite himself. "Vega, not veg_an. _It's a star roughly 25 light-years from earth."

"Oh. Well in that case I know that it's the brightest star in Lyra, and that people live there – according to J'onn, anyway."

"J'onn's right," Hal affirmed as he used the computer to pull the Vega star chart up onto the main view screen. "There's 22 planets in the Vega system, and almost all of them support life in one form or another."

Ollie took a moment to study the chart. Sure enough, there were 22 green dots, designated V1 through V22, marking each planet's location, and several red dots with long designations starting with A, labeling some fairly large asteroids if Ollie was reading things correctly. "Fascinating," he appraised, dismissively. "And what about trouble?"

"Near as We can tell, millions of years ago a highly advanced race called the Psions chose the Vega System for their research." As always, GL used the Royal We in reference to the Lantern Corps.

Words that only sounded ominous to either a superhero or a sci-fi buff, and Ollie was both. "Dare I ask what kind of research?"

"All kinds, but most extensively in genetics."

Ollie frowned, already sensing where this was going. "And I take it they didn't exactly obey the Prime Directive?"

Hal scoffed. "Oh, that's putting it kindly. They turned the entire star-system into the Island of Dr. Moreau."

"Charming." Ollie pronounced the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth. "So fast forward millions of years and...?"

"And we've got six distinct species, all decidedly warlike, all well ahead of Earth in terms of science and technology. The only reason the rest of the galaxy hasn't been worried about them is because they've been too busy fighting amongst themselves to bother with anyone outside of Vega."

"And I take it that's about to change?"

"In the short term? Not likely."

"And the long term? _What_ _is_ the long term, anyway?"

Hal's answering scowl signaled that his friend was clearly worried about something – which just served to up Ollie's own worry to somewhere around mild dread.

"That would be the sixty-four thousand dollar question." The words were pensive, Hal's eyes no doubt falling distant behind the mask. It was clear to Ollie that GL's thoughts were floating somewhere far away, orbiting Vega.

"And the grand-prize answer?"

Hal sighed, his gaze drifting to the star chart, as though if he stared at it hard enough the answers just might appear out of thin air. "Vega's a powder keg. When it all goes up, there's a chance the flack might spill over into neighboring systems, but only in the sense that they might see refugee traffic. Earth's a bit far out, but..."

"_But?_"

"There's still an off chance someone might make for Mars. J'onn was aware of Vega – maybe the feeling's mutual."

Ollie shrugged. "Well then their intel is grossly out of date."

"Maybe. Maybe not. We'll need to be on alert."

"Yeah..." Ollie had no arguments on that score. He also had the sinking suspicion that he didn't have all the pieces to the puzzle yet. "So, refugees huh? We seem to collect them."

It was gallows humor at best, and Hal didn't bite.

"But that's not what you're worried about."

Hal frowned again around a thoughtful pause. "How's your history, Arrow?"

Ollie shrugged. "That depends. My modern is better than my not-so-modern, but I do watch the history channel."

Hal shot him a sideways glance.

"When there's nothing else on, anyway," he amended.

Hal nodded, the ghost of a smile teasing his lips for a moment. "Well, I've got an analogy for you then." He turned his attention back to the view screen. Ollie knew that whatever GL was going to say, he wasn't going to like it.

"Europe."

Ollie blinked. "Europe?"

Hal nodded towards the view screen. "Europe, 1914."

It took Ollie all of two seconds to work that out for himself. Then he grimaced. "Shit."

"Shit is right."

This time Ollie ignored the profanity. "So what are you guys going to do about it?" he asked. Hal hadn't yet mentioned any of Oa's plans.

Lantern bowed his head, his eyes drifting closed. Ollie's seen that gesture before; whenever Hal spoke of his parents, or skated around the classified truth of some of his Air Force stories, and Ollie knew what it meant.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

"Oh, shit. You're not going to do anything_, _are you. You – the frigg'n intergalactic UN – are just going to sit back and watch an entire system explode into some epic galactic war. Oh, well, that's just great. And what about when the fallout reaches Earth? You going to ignore the problem then, too?"

"I don't like it either," Hal admitted, though he didn't sound frustrated or defensive or anything else Ollie might have been expecting. Instead he just sounded tired, and Ollie suddenly got the impression that Hal had been through this argument a number of times already.

Ollie sighed. "The Jedi Council wouldn't listen to you, huh?"

Hal just barely smiled, acknowledgment of Ollie's faith in him. "I wasn't the only one, but I'm afraid ours was the minority vote.

"And can I ask _why _the Lantern Corps is choosing to deliberately ignore its own doctrine?"

Hal didn't hesitate. Instead he all but spat the explanation out like poison. "Because the Guardians created the Psions."

It took Ollie a moment to connect the dots, but then he decided to ignore them in favor of the more pertinent question. "And what does _that _have to do with anything?"

"Can't you guess? They think the best way to deal with their mistake is to bury their heads in the sand and hope it all just goes away on its own."

So strong was Hal's bitterness that Ollie could practically taste it on his own tongue. "Wonderful," he droned, but then suddenly he remembered— "And where does Hawkman fit into all this?"

To this question, Hal smirked. Or at least he bared his teeth. And he turned his ring into a laser pointer, illuminating planet V7. "Right there," he said. "On Thanagar."

Ollie remembered how Hal had hedged around the matter of Vega's intel, and— "Oh. Oh fuck, no. I may not _like _Hawkman – actually, I may really _dis_like him – but that doesn't mean I don't trust him." Then he winced. "Well ok, I _don't_ trust him – never did – but that's not – I don't think he'd betray us, I mean. Because he wouldn't." Ollie paused to swallow around the growing lump in his throat. "Would he?"

"Earth is too primitive to be of any tactical assistance to anyone in Vega," was Hal's answer. "And in case any of them have any colonialist leanings, we're too far away to face an immanent threat."

Ollie rolled his eyes – a gesture hidden by his mask. "Oh, so it's not that Hawkman won't betray us, it's just that his superiors won't be able to do anything with his information. Great. Real comforting."

Hal shrugged. "Tactically..."

And Ollie blew out a huge sigh. "Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. So I guess the question is: what do we do about it?"

"Do we know what Superman is doing? Or when he'll be back?"

Ollie knew that wasn't Hal changing the subject; it was Hal thinking three steps ahead. "Not a clue what he's doing, but he said it wouldn't take long. Day or two, tops."

"Then we wait for him."

"You know his thing with NASA could just be coincidence, right?"

"Oh probably, but he needs to hear this anyway."

"And in the meantime?"

Hal's grin was slight, barely noticeable really, but it finally erred on the side of sincerity for once instead of a perverse mockery of humor. That had to count for something, Ollie figured. He just didn't know what.

"What else? We wait."

"If you pushed the panic button we could get everyone here inside an hour."

"And what would I tell them? There's no immanent threat here. Just the potential for a minor one."

"What about the likely breach of JLA security? They'd sure as hell want to know about that – even Arthur would show up!"

"Even if Hawkman left the same day I did it would still take him..." and Hal's fingers flew over the keyboard, and math way above Ollie's head appeared on the screen. "Another two weeks before he reached Thanagar."

"Not if he modified his shuttle with Kryptonian tech it wouldn't."

Hal shook his head. "Their systems are incompatible. He would have had to gut the engines and redesign the whole thing. I think someone would have noticed."

"So you're saying we have two weeks before we should start to worry?"

"Something like that." Hal didn't sound too convinced, but then Ollie understood where he was coming from. Even if took Hawkman another two weeks before he could spill Earth's secrets – not to mention the JLA's – to his superiors, and even with there being little chance that any action would be taken in any relevant timeframe, that hardly changed the fact that the prospect would stay hanging above their heads like the sword of Damocles. And maybe Hal could be pragmatic about it, but that didn't mean that it was easy for him.

"You should head home then," Ollie told him, his voice perhaps a bit too studiously casual. "Grab a shower at least."

"Yeah..." Another sigh, this one slumping Hal's shoulders with it. "Yeah." Green energy poured out from Hal's ring and enveloped him. "See you soon." He let himself hover over to the door.

"Yeah," Ollie echoed as the doors swished opened. "Soon."

Moments later and Green Arrow was alone on the Watchtower again. He went back to the star map and stared into the two-dimensional planes of the Vega system. Hawkman was a sanctimonious sonofabitch, but then he'd always come through for them when it mattered most. Ollie could believe in a heartbeat that Hawkman would tell his superiors that Mars was dead and Earth was too primitive to bother with – and with much laughing and fun-poking at Earth's expense, to boot – but Ollie absolutely refused to believe that his fellow Leaguer would sell them all upriver. Now, maybe that was naïveté, but Ollie liked to think he possessed enough self-awareness to be able to separate subjective dislike from objective assessment. At least, he hoped so anyway, because if not then Earth could be thoroughly and royally screwed.

* * *

* * *

**Sector 2828  
Tamaran**

Princess Kormand'r stood at the view-port of her small shuttle as her crew ran through their pre-landing checklists. No matter how many times she'd done this, or how many times she may yet do this, still, there wasn't a sight in the galaxy that could ever compare to the view of her beloved Tamaran from low landing-queue orbit. The molten reds of the Glarthnaal Mountains softening down into the burnished golds of the Viskul Steppes crosscut with the latticework of agricultural zones; the shimmering emerald of the Klorthgan Sea as it brushed up against the dusky coastland speckled with boats, tiny grey insects from this distance; the spires of Her beautiful, bountiful cities scraping at the lavender sky in fingers of pearl and silver and adamant; and lastly the sprawling capital of Hasdragaal growing steadily larger before her eyes, with the Towers of Government slowing rising up to meet them as though Great Tamaran Herself was reaching out to cradle them in the palm of Her mighty hand.

Yes, Kormand'r loved her home planet, first, foremost, and best.

It was the one fact that allowed her to sleep at night.

Finally her pilot announced that they were next in line for landing, and as the shuttle began it slow and steady descent through the troposphere the viewport was obscured by the swirling violet of Tamaran's nominal cloud-cover. Though the ship was essentially flying blind – provenance of X'Hal and machines – Kormand'r felt its movement in her bones: when their painstakingly gradual drop began to pick up speed as they got caught up in Tamaran's gravitational pull and then the slight head-rush that was her shuttle's internal compensators adjusting for the pull of terminal velocity; when the sudden, gut-yanking _lurch_ meant that the landing thrusters had fired and that their speed was reducing exponentially with every passing second; when the sudden rubbery-ness of her limbs meant that the shuttle's artificial gravity reset itself and then powered down; and then lastly the all-pervading _hiss_ that was their stale, recycled air finally venting with the outside atmosphere. Any minute now, she'd begin to hear her crew begin the post-landing checklist, and her minders would come to fetch her for her own pre-disembarkation ablutions.

"Milady?"

And right on schedule. Kormand'r nearly smiled. Leeltj was one of the most competent valets she'd ever had. The girl was a complete dunderhead but she did know fashion, and she was unfailingly gentle in assuring that her Princess was always most suitably presented.

That didn't mean that Kormand'r had to enjoy the process, however. She sighed dramatically. "Oh, must we?"

Leeltj frowned. "Yes, Milady." Her answer was entirely serious.

"What's the point? I'm just going to head straight home from here. I'm not even stopping by the office first."

"It's the law, Milady," Leeltj flawlessly reminded her, and Kormand'r scowled. Ah yes. The idiot protocols that governed the Royal Family's public appearances. Those particular grievances were her grandmother's fault and they sat squarely atop the laundry list of changes that Kormand'r was planning to make to Tamaran's Body of Law.

"Of course it is," Kormand'r scoffed, but her tone was completely lost on poor Leeltj, who was still waiting patiently at the door.

"Come, Milady. I have your arrival attire all planned out. It won't take but a minute to see you properly adorned."

Leeltj's ideas of 'but a minute' were entirely out of sync with the rest of the world, Kormand'r was sure, but then they sooner they started the sooner she could escape her valet's well-meaning clutches. "Oh, very well," she agreed with a put-upon sigh. "But do you think we could leave my hair alone this time? I'm just going to wash it when I get in, anyway."

"I'll be very quick, Milady," came Leeltj's very telling non-answer, and there was nothing else for it. Kormand'r followed her valet back to her suite. She really didn't mind the girl, truth be told. For all that Leeltj had the intellectual capacity of a lamppost at least she didn't deign to speak on matters she knew nothing about – or perhaps more importantly, on matters that didn't concern her at all.

When she was queen, Kormand'r vowed to keep Leeltj in her employ. Good valets were had to come by, after all, and she wasn't above admitting that she'd need professional advice on dressing for her adoring masses.

* * *

Leeltj's 'but a minute' was actually closer to thirty, but relatively speaking that was almost a rush job. The robes she'd picked were tastefully simple and the hairstyle intricate and yet subdued. Kormand'r couldn't help that she approved of the overall effect, and Leeltj was rather disgustingly pleased with the smile her Princess bestowed upon her efforts.

"Please Milady, but I must remind you that it is nearly time for the changeover to your summer wardrobe."

Oh, right. The quadrennial fashion evolution. "What, already?" She'd just endured the last go-round right before this latest trip, and now here it was that time again and Kormand'r hadn't even had the chance to wear less than a quarter of what Leeltj had ordered for her. What a colossal waste of time and resources.

"Indeed, Milady. The arrangements have already been taken care of, save the fittings. Those should be held as soon as possible – whenever Milady's schedule permits, of course."

"First thing, then," Kormand'r decided, and Leeltj positively beamed. Kormand'r didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't out of any sense of enthusiasm. Rather she just wanted the whole idiot business to be over with as soon as possible.

X'Hal willing, it would be the last of such fittings she'd ever have to endure. Or at least, the last that she couldn't tackle piecemeal and on her own time.

There were times, Kormand'r reflected, when she was certain that her bizarre affection for Leeltj was going to prove to be terribly inconvenient.

Then suddenly the main door chimed – and that would be her escorts. Really. As if Kormand'r actually _needed_ bodyguards. Though, the smokescreen that she was the weakest link in the Royal Line was definitely an asset.

"Enter!"

"If you're ready, Princess?" It was Blork, chief of the Idiot Brigade that made up her personal guard. Grim, serious, and wholly devoted to her father, Blork tended to view her as particularly fragile ornament of the Royal Palace, and one that couldn't rescue herself from a wet paper sack if all of Vega depended on it. Please. As if she spent years lobbying for the role of Ambassador to Okaara for its uninspiring views and retch-worthy cuisine.

"After you," Kormand'r gestured, politely formal because she knew Blork would bristle at the prospect of having to place her personal safety above etiquette's response to Courtly Manners – and that was another ridiculous set of outdated edicts Kormand'r couldn't wait to be rid of.

Too bad Blork wouldn't live to see the day.

Kormand'r hadn't yet decided if she should be gracious enough to allow him to die believing himself a hero because, overconfident lummox or not, he'd been the head of her guard since she was knee-high to his X-237. Of course, she was also of a mind to take him down herself in unarmed combat, because every time she imaged the look on his face when he realized not only had she finally mastered the art of flight but that she'd also learned fifty-seven different ways of handing him his own ass without even having to avail herself of that ancestral privilege, the picture very nearly left her cackling in unholy glee.

Her six-man team of bodyguards kept her perfunctorily surrounded for the half-minute walk from the landing pad across to where the royal car was idling patiently. Then her escorts all piled into the trail-car; all except for Blork, who climbed in the cab with her driver. Kormand'r actually smiled a bit. Varand'r had only a year or so left before retirement. One of her first orders of business once she returned to her Homeworld Office would be to grant him a sudden, impromptu vacation to some inclusive resort far, far away from any of Tamaran's major cities. She owed him that much, at least.

The ride from the Executive Landing Bay across the sprawling eyesore that was Government Center and unto the Royal Palace was unsurprisingly uneventful, and Kormand'r spent the duration marveling at how Tamaran's architects had no concepts of aesthetics or economic usage of space – _morons_, the whole lot of them, past, present, and undoubtedly future – that it was a mercy when the motorcade finally docked in the Royal Garage. From there Blork's team escorted her into the Royal Elevators and up into the Royal Foyer – where thankfully their duty ended. At least palace security was elegantly nondescript. Great-grandfather knew what he was doing when he designed the system, Kormand'r gave him that.

Why was it that the only of her relatives she could stomach were the ones she met in her history texts?

"Kormi!"

Then the sudden, shrill sound of her brother's voice and Kormand'r instantly felt guilty for the thought. She smiled softly, sadly to herself and turned just in time to be 'surprised' by Ryand'r barreling into her torso, full-head of flight. She caught him deftly about the shoulders and then it was a simple thing to engineer their fall, and it allowed him the illusion that he'd managed to knock her off her feet. She landed safely, squarely, on her back, and grinned all the wider for how their antics would spoil all of Leeltj's painstaking work.

"Hiya, squirt." Supine, Kormand'r mussed the short shock of bright red hair, grateful that he was still able to get away with sabotaging his own valet's attempts to tame the unruly mop. Ryand'r squirmed, and the soprano trill of a little-boy's laughter echoed through the foyer.

"Hey, quit it!" He batted her hands away.

"If you say so." And just like that she started tickling his ribs instead. Her brother only laughed harder, a delighted squeal as he flew back up and away as best as he was able. Which wasn't all that, truth be told, because Ryand'r was still coming into his powers. His body's center of gravity hadn't truly evened out yet – he still had a few more growth spurts to get through first – and his flight was awkward and gangly, much like the boy himself.

Kormand'r shoved herself back onto her feet as Ryand'r got his errant trajectory back under control. He landed beside his sister and wrapped his arms around her in (what he hoped was) a breath-stealing squeeze. Kormand'r rewarded him with a feigned grunt, and hugged him back with barely a fraction of her total strength.

"Dad said you'd probably be home today." His voice was muffled for the way his face was nuzzling the lush velvet of her outer robe.

"Oh he did, did he? Is that why you're here and not at the Academy where you belong?"

Ryand'r pulled back. "Uh huh. Got a two-day pass."

"Is that so? Well, why don't you follow me up to my chambers, then. You can fill me in on all the juicy gossip that I've missed for being away."

"All right!" You'd have thought Kormand'r had asked him if wouldn't mind skipping out of class. "Can I fly us there? Please-please-please, Kormi? Can I fly us?"

It was a definite character flaw. X'Hal, it was a _liability_ even, but Kormand'r was somehow pathologically incapable of denying her little brother anything. Not when he always looked to her like she'd hung the moons.

"If you drop me – or crash – then I'm sending you straight to Ginstak," she warned him. The threat of being forced to work for the Palace Cook had always cowed the Royal Children, and Ryand'r was no different. He paled slightly, but then he rebounded with an even wider grin.

"I won't," he promised, voice full of a child's self-assurance. "I've been practicing on Kori."

"Is that so?" Kormand'r willed herself down to the right side of civil. Just the mention of her sister's name was enough to blacken her mood.

"Uh huh, but don't worry. I'm getting really good at it."

Kormand'r kept her mouth shut and instead focused on maintaining a slight levitation beginning the moment Ryand'r swept her up into his arms. It certainly wouldn't do for anyone to suspect she was anything but the lightweight they all presumed her to be, and the added weight of muscle she'd packed on lately was likely enough to overwhelm her brother's intermittently increasing strength. It was surely a comical sight, given that she was still a good two heads taller than him, but nevertheless Kormand'r warped her longer arms about his neck and allowed him to play up the image of the dashing knight errant to the proverbial hilt.

"Alright, now hold on…"

As if she wasn't doing that already, but Kormand'r merely tightened her arms a bit as her brother launched them into the air.

It was a cautious flight at best, slow and not just a little bit wobbly, but then Kormand'r was willing to chalk the speed up to Ryand'r being cautious, either in the face of her earlier threat or because he truly didn't have as much confidence in his burgeoning abilities that he'd claimed.

It was a fair distance from the Palace Foyer to the Royal Apartments, and even then Kormand'r's own chambers were as isolated as one could get while still being in the same general wing, but even if they'd made the trek on foot it likely wouldn't have taken as long as this flight was probably going to. All boasts aside, Ryand'r had likely been 'practicing on Kori' because, quite bluntly, he needed all the help he could get. His in-flight sense of equilibrium was precarious enough on its own, and then counterbalancing the added front-end weight of a passenger in his arms on top of that required the whole of his concentration, just to keep from nose-diving. By the time they arrived outside of her door Ryand'r was trembling and sweaty, and Kormand'r was more than ready for the flight to be over.

"Ryand'r!"

Kormand'r reflexively cringed. That was their father's voice, booming now in obvious reprimand. The King of Tamaran might have been about as useful as grebnaks on a thrusgull, politically speaking, but he was still the undisputed disciplinarian of the family. Ryand'r seemed torn between being immensely pleased with himself for completing the flight without mishap (and never mind that Kormand'r had allowed herself to levitate more and more out of his grip, easing the strain on his arms without his even noticing) and suddenly fearing that he was about to be punished for the deed.

Kormand'r stepped forward, all studiously formal and immaculately polite, the picture of what the doddering old buffoon expected of his eldest. "Greetings, father. I really must express just how far Ryand'r has progressed in his studies of aerodynamics. A credit to his tutors, I am sure."

"What?" The King was suddenly flustered. "Oh – er – yes. Yes he is, at that." But then he glared down at his only son. "No matter that we keep reminding him not to conduct his studies inside of doors."

"Oh, but it was for Kormi, dad," Ryand'r protested, violet eyes wide and impossibly sincere, and it was the perfect expression to melt their father's heart.

"Right, right. Of course." His stern countenance softened as he was yet again reminded of the tragedy that was his eldest daughter's supposed defect. When it came to the Royal Lineage, unable to fly obviously meant unable to think, unable to fend for oneself, unable to contribute anything remotely useful to society. Kormand'r was never more than a slightly taller child in her parents' eyes, and X'Hal but she _hated them_ for that. Ryand'r was the only one who never treated her differently, probably because he never really thought of her as being 'disabled' in the first place.

"And welcome home, Kormand'r my treasure," the King was saying, regressing back to that insufferably paternal tone he'd favored them with when they were small. She was the only one who was never allowed to outgrow the consideration. "I trust that affairs on Okaara are the same as they ever were?"

"Indeed they are, father," she informed him, a warm glow suffusing her at the thought of their supposed allies' true opinions of her people. The Okaarans held the Tamaraneans to be arrogant, primitive, willfully ignorant, far too steeped in their decidedly backwards traditions, and entirely unable to find the path towards enlightenment even with both hands and a chart – and those opinions most certainly hadn't changed a bit. It was only by expressing a desire to study at the feet of the Okaaran Masters that Kormand'r set herself apart, and it was only through proving herself worthy of being taught that she finally earned their blessing.

"Good, good. That's very good. Your mother and I are very proud of you, Kormand'r."

"Thank you, father." A slight bow and a bashful little grin – the only outward evidence that Kormand'r was busily cataloging nineteen unique ways in which she could physically stuff his supposed pride through all the orifices that good little girls weren't supposed to mention in polite company.

"Yes, well. I should let the two of you catch up," he said to Ryand'r, not only dismissing her entirely but _talking over her_ too, as if she was the younger sibling and Ryand'r the responsible one. "No doubt you and your sister have a lot to talk about. Good night, my treasures!" There he kissed Kormand'r's cheek and dropped a hand onto Ryandr's head in benediction before continuing down the corridor, doubtless bound for the Royal Suites.

His death would be slow, Kormand'r vowed. Long and lingering down in the belly of a Gordanian spice mine. And his entire cabinet would be traded to the H'San Natall Minister of Entertainment for a dernt-feather coat and a pair of kamly shoes. She'd just have to make sure Ryand'r was otherwise occupied when they broadcasted next season's gladiatorial games.

"C'mon, Kormi, open the door! I have to tell you about the prank I pulled on the deputy headmaster!"

Kormand'r's mind returned to the present with a jolt neatly coinciding with her brother slapping her arm as he tried to recapture her attention. She watched him bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet, the motion ever-so-slightly (and likely unconsciously) aided by sputtering flight impulses, and she had to bite back a grin because finally and at ever long last she knew what it was like to be nearly overcome with the visceral joy that triggered the gift of flight. Now very soon, that joy would be made tangible, and her late-blooming talent would be hidden no longer.

"Sure thing, squirt." She pressed her palm to the scanner and the locks disengaged. The door to her chambers swung open with minimal flourish and Kormand'r gestured for her brother to precede her. Ryand'r flew across the threshold with a joyous whoop.

_Soon_, she thought as she followed sedately on foot behind him, that one thought making her own steps suspiciously lighter.

_Yes, very soon_.


End file.
